<p>My friend is telling me that California Community Colleges (Santa Monica City College) is as hard or harder than UCLA (where im going), is this true?</p>
<p>Community colleges (particularly in California) have become very competitive in the last few years. The original perception is that community colleges are for those who were complete slackers/idiots who couldn't get into ANY four year college.</p>
<p>Nowadays (and this is particularly prevalent with Asian-americans), many of those who go to community colleges (or junior colleges, JCs) are those who actually have the credentials to attend four-year colleges (including the Cal States, UC Riverside, and even mid-tier UCs). However, while these ppl have the ambition to attend an elite school (eg. UC-Berkeley, UCLA, USC), they don't quite have the grades or SAT scores during their high school years to get admitted into those institutions so they use JC's as a chance to redeem themselves and essentially enter the more prestigious colleges through "backdoor" ways. (In California, UC schools have to take in JCs as priority transfers.) </p>
<p>With thousands of kids using this method, it has gotten extremely competitive in JCs (especially top notch ones like Santa Monica College) b/c schools like UCLA, Berkeley can only accept so many transfers.</p>
<p>uhh where did u here that?</p>
<p>"they don't quite have the grades or SAT scores during their high school years"</p>
<p>or the cash to throw at these private schools</p>
<p>there's no way ccc classes are as rigorous as ucla classes.</p>
<p>I started out at a juco, and I can tell you that I worked much harder and had more of an enriching experience than I did in my top-ranked grad program at a big research university.</p>
<p>I know this isn't always the case, but I do know of others that have experiences similar to my own.</p>