So I’m going to my 2nd year of college this fall. Last year I went to a 4 year college. I took mostly GE classes and I only got one C+. All my other grades were A and Bs but most were A. This fall I’m still going back to the 4 year college, but I’m also going to community college. Basically I’m going to 2 colleges this fall (a 4 year and a community college). I’m just going to be taking 2 or 3 GE classes at community college. My question is are community college classes easier than the equilvalent course at a 4 year college? I know how hard a class is depend a lot on the professor, but I’d like some advice from people who had gone to both a 4 year and community college. Any help would be appreciated.
It depends on what you define as “easier”, but as a whole, community colleges tend to be easier than four year colleges.
At the community college in my area it depends on your major. For example, they have an engineering program with direct transfer to two highly ranked 4 year schools. That program at the CC is very difficult. Some other programs are easier. But at that school some programs actually have long waiting lists and difficult prerequisite and tests in order to get into them because they are in such demand (dental hygiene, nursing, electrician).
Will your 4 year college allow this? Will they accept the credits?
Yes they allow transfer credit from community classes
Make sure they accept credit from you as an enrolled student and not just a transfer—are you allowed to be enrolled at both schools full time?
I found my community college classes to be the equivalent of my 4-year-university GE classes for the most part. I took two at CC that were very difficult with higher professor standards than I was used to. But for the most part, I think there is less work and more opportunities to succeed.
I think it really depends. Engineering physics and Calc 3 my son is currently taking is hard no matter where you take it with low pass avg etc Most of the kids are from name brand schools but this is summer classes. When I went my first year to community College a lot of my classes where taught by the same faculty as the 4 year college I was going to the next year so classes where Identical. I would go with the idea that you are saving money on your classes but the amount of work should be the same.
A mixed bag of easy and comparable for my kid at CC. To him the only really hard comparable-to-University class has been his Data Structures class. The rest have all been classes that didn’t have any significant prereqs and those were all easy classes.
Hi there. I went to several community colleges (like six?) and eventually transferred to the University of Southern California. Here’s my opinion. The content of a community college class is not necessarily easier than a university class (math is still math, C++ is still C++), but I do believe it is easier to get a good grade in community college. One of the reasons being is that community college professors (or at least the ones I had) offer a ton of extra credit. In my Java class at a CC, I had something like 150% in the class. It was crazy how high my grade was. At the university level, with things like the curve and a real lack of extra credit opportunities, my grade in a tough Java-centric class came out to a B. I had only one B in my entire community college career. I failed to transfer the first time around, so by the end of it, I had 100 units. All A’s except for the one B that I got the year I wasn’t able to transfer. At USC, I saw more B’s than A’s and even a few C’s. There was even one class that I didn’t pass at all.
Community college may also just seem easier simply due to the fact that a lot of people are slackers and doing the bare minimum. This means that the exceptional students stand out. At the university level, the class is filled with exceptional students and while you were above average at the CC level, you might be just average at the university level. The transition was very tough for me. I did eventually get into the groove of things and did a little bit of research and even took a graduate level class my final semester at USC.
TLDR; Yup, it is sometimes quite a bit easier to do well in a community college class compared to a university/4 year college class.