Hi all, my son is a senior at a northern Virginia high school and wants to get a degree in engineering program (his other interest is biology - probably biomedical research). His first choice is Virginia Tech, but it’s probably a slightly less than 50% chance he gets into their engineering school. He’s also looking at WPI, RPI, ASU, University of Washington and maybe Drexel. He stands a pretty good chance at getting into a couple of those.
The dilemma is that Virginia has a great program where you can do 2 years at Virginia community college and get guaranteed admissions to Virginia Tech engineering (as well as UVA). This sounds like a no brainer from a cost to value of degree awarded (really cheap first two years and then in state tuition to Virginia Tech for the last two years). Even if he has to do 3 years at Virginia Tech after CC because of the need to take pre-reqs for his chosen major, it would still be cheaper than any other option probably.
The question though is how well prepared would he be to enter into a pretty competitive program after 2 years of CC? I’ve taken refresher courses at the community college here from time to time, and the classes were fine if rather uninspiring.
While I do not know of anybody personally, I know that a substantial number of the CS majors at UIC start at one of the Chicago City Colleges CCs (my wife was faculty at UIC for a long time). They are pretty successful.
However, there can be an issue with having to take all of the high intensity math and CS courses in two years. Most CS programs will accept most gen-ed courses from CCs, but will only rarely (if at all) accept any courses for the major, including all of the required math courses.
So while it can be a much cheaper option, it is an option that requires a pretty intense junior and senior year, academically.
Thank you for the reply. They do a pretty good job of mapping CC courses to Virginia Tech courses, so you can be sure your credits carry over, but I suspect you’re correct, that there will be some specific high level math courses he’d have to take at Tech.
I’m torn – I have life long friends from my freshman year of college, and it’s such a great experience. It’s hard to quantify though.
The point about internships is great through.
Your info about Alabama in the other thread is good though – he’d basically be paying a bit over $20K per year to go there, and if he works hard he’d have a ton of great opportunities.
Tuition room and board is $47k and you get 30.5k off. They put in $3k for transport , etc. but that’s individual. Books are shockingly cheap for both my kids- two different schools and majors.
When they move off campus it gets cheaper. I’ll spend - and haven’t kept track - maybe $70k. Maybe. And if it works out as hoped, he’ll have the same job at the same salary as if he’d gone to Purdue.
I hear great things about Purdue and I know @momofboiler1 says they start job prep right away Vs Bama in the 4th year. Hence I said to replace unaffordable reach Michigan with still a reach but a tad easier to get in and within your budget Purdue.
“If he works hard he will have a ton of opportunities”… (paraphrasing)…
This statement is very important but very true at most schools. The kids that have drive and go for it usually get the best
Opportunities. It’s a learned mindset.
The CC to 4 year college approach is really dependent on the CC and the connection to the school. VTech is fantastic. Unless affordability is an issue (yes, it’s always an issue), there are just so many first year opportunities that the larger schools have access /connections to. Also there is a friendly competitiveness to help push each other to excell that you might not find at a CC. But saying this there are truly some amazing CC out there. You would know better about your local CC then I.
Here in NC, NCSU offers a 2+2 program and lots of kids transfer from CC to NCSU. But I agree with several posters, the 4 year experience is a great one and should not be missed unless admission/affordability issues are at play. Does not seem to be the case in your case.
My BIL did it from a south central VA cc to Virginia Tech as an ME, albeit 30 years ago. His son more recently did it as poly sci. BIL had no issues that I know of, and I’m pretty sure NOVA’s cc is well above the ones we have in this part of the state.
Thanks everyone – it’s hard to quantify the value of a 4 year experience vs the more tangible financial numbers and graduating from a high ranking program.
Ultimately it’ll be his call, just trying to make sure he has all the right info!
The reality is if the goal is to become an engineer then do that in anyway that is affordable to your family. It’s the end result that counts. One problem with some schools is that some math /science doesn’t transfer cleanly. Since your CCs tend to have a strong connection to VT, I assume that the classes align. That is something I would check into at all other schools you are considering. Don’t want to have to retake classes. Also if they align, I would check out clubs /activities that align with your son’s interests. They might have a stronger connection to engineering that we might think since it not local to us. Also maybe the CC has aligned internships after the first (very hard), second year also. I would look at opportunities that maybe they offer that could be looked at as an advantage per se.
Thanks. He would go to Northern Virginia Community College. They have a career center that works with the very large number of companies in the area to find internships for their students, so that’s pretty good. They seem to be more IT focused than engineering (particularly bio engineering) though.
Virginia Tech publishes a course mapping guide for the Virginia Community colleges so you know exactly which course will transfer, so that’s less of a concern. The challenge is Virginia Tech won’t let you go straight into a major when you transfer, you have to maintain a 3.0 for your first semester there before you can declare a major, and that can potentially put you off graduating in 4 years… from what I’ve read it’s still possible, but best to plan for a bit more time.
Another thought, my son will have enough AP’s that the cc will accept in the associate degree program he has to complete that he could take just 2 classes his summer after high school graduation and he could graduate cc and transfer to Virginia Tech after 1 year. I’d need to check to see if Virginia Tech would honor the guaranteed transfer with AP credits instead of just taking the courses, but then he’d be admitted as a junior into Virginia Tech only 1 year after high school – which means he could take a bit of time getting into his preferred major’s courses and graduate with his peers in 3 years.
My son at Michigan took 2 classes freshman summer year at at CC since he wanted to minor and actually double minored.Kids in his class’s were from Michigan, Berkley, Georgia Tech etc. It actually was challenging. I would actually feel more comfortable with transferring after 1 year and was going to actually ask this question. I don’t blame them to not admit directly. Usually the rigor is much more at VTech etc. At Michigan they say getting a “B” is like getting an “A” anywhere else… Lol. Engineering is very hard stuff… My son’s moto at Michigan was “We all struggle together”
If the instruction is substantially differentiated between the two, the transition from CC may also depend upon his intended engineering major. I went full four years of engineering at a highly ranked engineering school. Freshman year there was the classic intro engineering lecture where the prof said “look left, now look right,…one of you won’t be here in the end”. Basically, the first two years of engineering were the weed-out years. Those were struggles for me, but when it finally transitioned to upperclass electives in my selected field beginning junior year I shined. I loved those upperclass electives and the grades reflected my interest. In certain respective fields, you need the basic intros but some may find they don’t need all the advanced “foundational” courses. Maybe not all the advanced math, or the advanced chemistry, or the advanced physics. Really depends upon the major I think. Anyways, one of my fellow engineering friends was a CC transfer. He saved a lot of money. He saved his sanity from the cut-throat weed-out years. AND importantly, he saved his graduating GPA, because he was the top of the class at his CC so his GPA wasn’t impacted by the weed-out curving. I’d say he was probably average caliber among the University engineering class, so he may not have even survived the weed-out years. I had several friends who were the top of their high school classes, but got blown out by the weed-out engineering classes and either had to change majors or transfer schools (and they didn’t transfer into engineering). Here’s the irony - those guys were indeed smarter than the average University student, but their GPAs got hit so hard that they couldn’t change into some majors that would have easily accepted them directly from high school; and where I believe they would have been among the top students in those majors.
Things might have changed in the last 40 years, but that was my observation on the benefits of CC transferring.
“Natural” weed-out – usually because students change out of engineering on their own due to finding it too difficult or too much work. More common at less selective colleges or engineering divisions.
Intentional weed-out – usually because a department is capacity constrained and cannot admit all students who want to enter the major, and the college or engineering division admits to an undeclared status with a secondary admission process to enter the major after a few semesters of college (or a variant like at Wisconsin where students must maintain a high GPA to stay in the major).
