Community College vs. Gap Year vs. 4 yr. University vs. Vocational School

College Search & Selection
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<p>I don't believe that there has been a discussion thread comparing these 4 choices. </p>

<p>Community College -
- Grade forgiveness
- Save a TON of money
- Smaller class sizes
- Get your AA then transfer to 4 yr.
- Enough free time to get a part time job </p>

<p>Gap Year -
- Many positives towards a gap year, can anyone name some negatives except that some students may not be motivated to go back to a CC or a 4 yr. University. </p>

<p>4 yr. University
- Don't really need to label positives and negatives except if you choose one of the other options over this
- Might miss out on the "college experience" if you choose a different option</p>

<p>Vocational School -
- Learn a specific trade that can be very useful
- Cheaper than a 4 yr University
- Smaller class sizes, more hand on learning
- Very good option if you don't want to go into law, med, research, etc.</p>

<p>Now, these are all my opinions on the given options. Anyone else have any other useful positive or negative opinions to contribute? </p>

2

<p>Com. College: Positives you listed - negative would mostly be public opinion. Sometimes the educators are so bad that they would be better with the gap year and self-study. It can really be a crap shoot though. There are many educators at CCs that are far better ‘teachers’ than many professors at top flight colleges.</p>

<p>Gap year - negatives would also be a lack of staying ‘sharp’ in terms of academics. It can also turn out that things are no better for you after the GAP year than they were before, thus wasting a year of education or earning.</p>

<p>‘4 year school’ - Tend to be overpriced depending on a multitude of factors. For some students, the ‘college atmosphere’ is a distraction from learning and they would be better off at Com. College until they mature a bit.</p>

<p>Vocational school - this is an entirely different animal altogether. If a trade is really what you prefer (and thank God for those who do), then this is easily the best option. You cannot really compare this to the others as most that I know who went to Vo-Tech had ZERO interest in going to any sort of a degree issuing institution. I would take issue with your last bullet as you cannot include anywhere near a comprehensive list of careers that would not be advanced via Vo-Tech.</p>

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<p>CC with intent to transfer to a 4-year school: The most academically advanced students are more likely to hit a “ceiling” on the offerings at a CC before they can transfer. E.g. some advanced-in-math students have already exhausted the local CC’s math offerings before they graduate from high school. Course articulation to four year schools may not be assured for majors where courses and curricula vary more. Students who can win large scholarships at 4-year schools will typically find scholarship opportunities as frosh better than as transfers. But starting at CC can be a good low cost way of doing the first two years of college for many students (the ones who are not super-advanced and are doing majors where course articulation is good). Students who are very undecided may find starting at CC beneficial, since CC students would not be on as restrictive a financial or administrative clock to decide and declare a major.</p>

<p>Gap year(s): Depends a lot on what the person does during the gap year. More common gap year activities are work and enlisted military service (obviously, the latter is multiple gap years, but comes with college funding after discharge). Here on these forums, it seems more common for students shut out of reach colleges to consider parentally supported “interesting” gap year activities.</p>

<p>Vocational school, or vocational program at CC: You would choose this route if the career you are interested in requires education taught in vocational programs, rather than requiring a bachelor’s degree.</p>

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<p>If the student is competitive for merit-based aid, the student should apply directly to the 4-year institutions. Classes taken at a CC or vocational school will almost certainly mean that the student loses freshman applicant status, and won’t be eligible for the kinds of merit aid that would have been possible applying as a freshman.</p>

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<p>Are we talking about taking a gap year vs. going to a community college or vocational school when you didn’t get into a preferred university? In that case, I think a gap year is only a good option for a high-stats student who has a good chance of getting merit aid, but just applied to the wrong cases for a variety of reasons. The gap year might give that student the opportunity reapply as a freshman the following year and have access to the best aid.</p>

<p>If we’re talking about gap years more generally when compared to the other options - well, first of all, it’s a false comparison because after a gap year(s) one can return to a four-year college or choose to go to a CC or vocational school. But putting that aside, the advantages all depend on the student and their family resources. A “gap year” is, in and of itself, an upper-middle-class concept - the idea is that the student will do something “enriching” during that gap year. The sons and daughters of the wealthy and almost-wealthy spend the time studying or volunteering abroad, or volunteering for Americorps while living at home, or trying to get an entrepreneurial endeavor off the ground. They do something that will make their application look better/more appealing to top colleges. That can be good if the student isn’t ready to go to college quite yet, and needs an extra year to mature, but still wants to go (or their parents want them to go) to a top college. If the student is CC- or votech-school bound anyway, there’s little point to this. Also, if the parents don’t have the resources to fund something enriching and appealing for junior to do during the year off, there’s also little point.</p>

<p>I don’t know what “grade forgiveness” is in terms of community colleges - any grad school you apply to will see all of your transcripts, so it’s not like you can mess up and it vanishes. The class sizes aren’t necessarily smaller - it depends on the size of the CC compared to the size of the college - and a student at a CC won’t necessarily have more free time than a student at a four-year; it just depends on the number of classes they’re taking. I see two main advantages to community colleges:</p>

<p>-The biggest is it’s far cheaper than a four year college, and they are everywhere. The vast majority of students - especially low-income or middle-class students - can commute to a community college within ~45 min of their family residence, and tuition can be a couple hundred dollars a credit hour. (My home state’s CC were $99/hour when I moved away.)
-The second is that it can be a lower-stakes environment for a mediocre or below-average student who really needs to get away from his/her high school in order to flourish. Some students do poorly in high school but really bloom in college, and the CC may be the entryway for them to really ramp up.</p>

<p>The biggest negative is that by far the majority of CC students never transfer to a four-year college. That could be simply because they never intended to - they were taking a few classes or just wanted the AA - but students who intend to transfer need to remain vigilant. They’re in an environment where the majority of their peers don’t want to, or won’t be able to, transfer as planned. Also, many CCs aren’t really places designed for the traditional-aged college student. There is an array of services at your average four-year elite college - your Swarthmores and Rhodes, and even your Rowans and UNC-Gs and Cal States - assuming that most of the students are 18-25 and living away from home for the first time, or at least commuting away from home for the first time in an unstructured environment. A CC can be more of the Wild West, so to speak, so students need to be really driven to find information for themselves about transferring and other policies.</p>

<p>As for vocational colleges, yeah the biggest advantages are that you learn a specific trade and that they’re cheaper than the four-year and sometimes even cheaper than the CC. They can, indeed, be really good options for the student who doesn’t want to continue to a four-year.</p>

<p>However, sometimes the things taught at votech colleges aren’t really in-demand. For example, a lot of vocational/technical schools are still offering pathways to LPN licensure when most hospitals prefer RNs and LPN roles are quickly vanishing. Another example - the vo/tech college nearest my hometown offers a two-year degree in accounting, but I can’t imagine what that would be useful for.</p>

<p>The other obvious disadvantage is that vocational/technical college grads (and AA holders) earn, on average, far less than bachelor’s degree holders. Of course the field matters as well as what you do with it, but your average welder or electrical line worker can’t hope to make as much over the trajectory of their career as your average middle management college grad. Sure, starting out they may make similar amounts, but studies show that college grads quickly pull away and make more. Also, more and more jobs that used to only require on-the-job training, technical training or an AA/AS are now requiring a bachelor’s (see the nurse example; lots of hospitals are preferring to hire BSNs instead of ASN educated RNs, even though their licensure is exactly the same!)</p>

<p>*</p>

<p>I also want to address this, because I see it around the fora a lot.</p>

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<p>I see a lot of people advising HS seniors taking a gap year “Don’t take ANY classes!” with the threat that they will surely lose their freshman applicant status. That’s not true! The vast majority of colleges only consider a student a transfer applicant if they have a certain number of college-level credits taken after high school graduation. That number is usually 24-30 (which is about 8-10 courses), which is equivalent to about a full-time year of college. At some colleges, I’ve seen it be about 12-15, but I’ve never seen one less than that.</p>

<p>Of course every student should check what transfer status is at their target colleges to be 100% sure. But at the VAST majority of colleges, a student can take a few college classes - for enrichment, to keep up with math or languages, etc. - in their gap year and not be considered a transfer applicant.</p>

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<p>University of California: “You are a transfer student if you enrolled in a regular session at a college or university after high school. (Summer sessions don’t count.)” <a href=“http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/transfer/”>http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/transfer/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>California State University: “The California State University considers you an undergraduate transfer student if you have completed coursework at any community college, college or university in the first regular school term following your high school graduation.” <a href=“http://www.calstate.edu/transfer/”>http://www.calstate.edu/transfer/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Here is an example from OH:

<a href=“http://www2.kent.edu/transfercenter/faq.cfm”>http://www2.kent.edu/transfercenter/faq.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;