I am thinking of going to a university, probably U.C. Davis or something similar to that. I wonder if it’s actually that hard. Right now, I am a high school senior currently enroll as a concurrent student in a community college, and I am doing well. Community college is not too hard for me, but I need to do a lot of intense study.
I mean, am I going to definitely fail in a university?
It depends on what courses you take. Presumably, you are taking frosh-level courses at the community college; next year, you may be taking more advanced courses in some subjects, but frosh-level courses in others, whether you attend a community college or a university.
Community college courses intended for students intending to transfer to universities do need to maintain high enough standards that the universities accept the courses for transfer credit.
What makes you think you are definitely going to fail in university?
It sounds like you’re ahead and taking college level courses as a high school student (and doing well in them). That’s great! It doesn’t look like there are any signs suggesting you’ll fail in university at all.
Classes (in general) get more difficult every time you go up a level. Community college courses are generally lower-level courses designed for first and second year students. Upper-level courses designed for third or fourth year college students are generally more difficult. However, whether or not you think any course is really difficult depends on a lot of things, like how prepared you are for the class and how good you are at the subject. It also may depend on the community college or the professor, as some schools or classes may be more rigorous than others. More advanced courses will likely be more difficult, but you’ll also be a better prepared student and more ready to take on those courses. Some students find the jump from high school to college courses (or lower level courses to upper level courses or whatever) to be very huge, while others find it very manageable.
It depends on what classes you’re taking and the professors you have. The actual material in a given intro class should be approximately the same between a community college and a university, but the expectations of the professor and the way it’s taught will cause the difficulty to vary. You could end up with a ridiculously difficult professor for English 101 at your community college compared to a relatively easy English 101 professor at the university, or vice versa. Or the classes could be approximately the same difficulty. It all depends.
As far as upper division classes go, there’s no equivalent at a community college so there’s no comparison to draw there. I will say that in my experience, the material is harder in upper division classes but it’s also much more interesting, which makes it easier to pay attention to and study for. I’ve found it easier to do well in upper division classes compared to some lower division classes because of that.
One thing that can potentially make a difference is the environment you’re in. Between commuting to a community college and dorming at a university, your experiences will be completely different and it might affect your academics (whether good or bad). If you’re commuting to the university I’d imagine that it wouldn’t be hugely different experience-wise compared to commuting to the community college, but that would depend on the specific schools.
Side note, I go to UC Davis. If you have any questions about UCD specifically, feel free to post on the UCD board or PM me.
Thank you so much for the information
I took Calc 3 at my local community college over this past summer so I’d be ahead for the fall. I feel like I definitely learned the same information, but I was not tested on it as thoroughly as my HS friends who took the class at our university were. There were people in my CC class who complained about our four-question exams and struggled on our open-book-open-note-open-partner quizzes. It was definitely a different environment. (Though there were certainly others in my class who had a high A the whole time too.)
Thank you everyone for all the information.
HS/CC students tend to overanalyze the difficulty of a 4 year college. Don’t think about it so much… focus on the here and now, and take comfort in knowing that if other people can do well, so can you.
Keeping a mindful attitude helps with everything in life.
I wouldn’t say you will definitely fail at Davis, just as getting all A’s won’t guarantee you’ll succeed.
Davis attracts a lot of really bright students so you will be competing against them for grades. At CC the competition is lower because many students can’t focus solely on school–they have families, full or part-time jobs, and other obligations/concerns that full-time university students often don’t have (or have to a lesser extent).
Now you are probably in the top 10-20% of your class. When you go to 4 year college, you will be with a bunch of other people who were in the top 10-20% also. So go to class, do you homework, keep up iwth the readings, start your essays early, talk to your professors, form study groups, get a tutor if you need it.
While courses usually get harder as you advance in college, the swap-out is that they’re in a course you’re interested in. The only courses I found hard in college were a couple of basic courses in which I had no interest. The rest were manageable because I only took a few at a time and I was interested in and curious about the subject matter.
I would say they should be about the same. For my community college, my professors have connection on a university that most of their students’ transfer to, so their curriculums are the same as theirs. I would say that the reason why community college would be easier is not because of teaching but because of the accessibility. A community college class is usually not so big in numbers compared to a university. it’s easier to comprehend a teacher with about 12-40 students in class than sitting in a big room filled with a hundred students and your professor is on the very bottom standing with a microphone, trying to get through a lecture. A professor can accommodate more of your questions in a community college than a university and office hours of a professor wouldn’t be too packed since you’re not having hundreds of students trying to get a professor’s spared time. A university would require more self-study and less help from professors.
Community college is college life but at the same time like a prep for the bigger college life (university life). So, If you don’t want to overwhelm yourself too much, start small for a 2 years and transfer to a university afterwards. Make sure the credits you get from that community college is transferrable though, that way when you do transfer, you don’t have to worry about starting your third year from scratch.
You will also have instances where your teacher is foreign and has a very thick accent. I’ve heard a lot of cases where people struggle understanding their professor because of that reason and being in a university only makes it harder. I know one woman who studied in her desired university; she disliked it because of the huge classes which caused her to struggle understanding her professors. She moved to another university expecting good results, and had the same problems, and she finally settled in a community college which she liked better.
Don’t take into account how prestigious you would look if you went to a university than a community college either. If your credits will transfer from the community college to the university you want to go, you basically learned the same things the university required, but cheaper and easier to understand.
I was a CC transfer student to UC Davis and I definitely found my classes in university harder than my classes at CC. At my CC, it was easy for me to get good grades, but when I transferred, I found you need to put in a lot more effort to get those As or Bs. Even my Japanese classes were harder than my Japanese classes at CC. Plus, the quarter system was overwhelming for me, and I felt that classes moved way too fast with professors trying to fit everything into 10 weeks. I fare much better on semester systems where classes move along at a slower, steady pace.
Even for community college courses transfer to a university, the course might have been taught at a less rigorous level at the CC. In some subjects, there are textbooks specifically marketed toward CC classes. For intro econ courses, for example, the texts marketed toward CCs may have fewer equations, more pictures, and cover some topics in less detail.
It isn’t necessary that universities are harder than a community college. There are a lot of factors at play there, and it varies from class to class. Some professors may teach the subject every bit as rigorously at a community college. At some community colleges this may not be the case. I think the greater difficulty comes in transitioning from lower level courses to upper level courses. For physics majors, freshman level mechanics is -significantly- easier than junior level mechanics. If a student takes freshman level mechanics at a CC and then takes junior level mechanics at a university, they may end up perceiving the change in difficulty as a result of moving into a university. However, it’s important to realize that a lot of students that take their freshman/sophomore classes at a university still experience the same jump in difficulty.