If I go to community college for two years to take care of gen eds and apply to a school as a junior, will my chances of getting in be greater or lower?
depends on how you did in HS and how well you’ll do in CC.
But no, acceptance rates are LOWER for transfer applicants at most institutions.
Some colleges/systems do make transfer very feasible (within my knowledge the UC system and Cornell).
I agree with @theanaconda; Virginia also has an excellent CC to public university transfer policy (guaranteed admission and academic credit, under defined circumstances).
It’s also easier to transfer in to UNC than get in straight out of HS if you are OOS and USC probably is easier to transfer in to as well. Probably NEU as well. For UMich and NYU, it may be easier or about the same.
Vandy and ND use to have much higher transfer acceptance rates than acceptance rates out of HS. Not sure about now.
But for most of the elite privates, transfer acceptance rates are lower than straight out of HS.
It really depends on the school.
For example, Princeton admits no transfers at all, so your chance of transfer admission there is exactly zero.
But many public universities admit many students from their in-state community colleges, so if your high school credentials are relatively weak, you may have a better chance of admission as a junior transfer with a community college record that is stronger than your high school record. Some private universities like USC also admit substantial numbers of transfers.
If your high school credentials are relatively strong, then trying for frosh admission may result in more options at selective schools which admit few or no transfers (note that some of the most selective schools have generous need-based financial aid), and/or better merit scholarship options (up to full rides at less selective schools) as a frosh applicant than a transfer applicant (merit scholarships tend to be less available for transfers).
Where are you thinking you’d like to transfer?
Also, keep in mind that if you apply as a transfer, you lose out on merit scholarships (see the thread “did I really cost myself tens of thousands dollars?”) so that, if your HS stats are competitive, you’d be better off applying directly to the 4-year college you’re interested in.
Finally, your odds of graduating (and even more so, graduating in 4 years) are higher if you go straight to a 4-year university, with some caveats depending on the specific CC or your current stats.