<p>I'm currently a community college student who's attempting to transfer to a 4 year university. I spent one year of college at a LAC in NY where I had a 3.65 GPA (25 credits). I incurred $27k in loans from that school so I withdrew and enrolled at my local CC. During my 1st year of community college, I had a 3.83 GPA (31 credits) and was accepted as a transfer student to Fordham but decided to return because I wanted to transfer to an elite university just in case my law school plan didn't work out. Now I have a 3.91 (pending the likely 4.0 this semester) with 62 total credits at my CC. </p>
<p>Do you think I made a smart or foolish choice to essentially push back my graduation a year?</p>
<p>I think I made a smart choice because, assuming I do well at my transfer school:</p>
<p>A) I increased my UGPA by getting a 4.0 with 31 additional credits this year.
B) I was accepted at UNC-CH so far so my goal to get into an elite university has worked so if I don't get into a good law school my bachelor's degree will be reasonably strong.
C) Now with my UGPA higher I might have given myself more leverage with the LSAT.</p>
<p>Some people are telling me it was foolish to do this because now I'll graduate 5 years from the year of my HS graduation and have lost a year in earning power, but I've been trying to tell them that it was a good decision for the reasons I listed, especially considering I already had made a mistake by getting myself $20k+ in loans from my first school. </p>
<p>I'm hoping that the UGPA boost and good LSAT scores will get me into a T14 school. I think if I had not spent this extra year at CC, I could have only maxed my GPA out at a 3.85, so now I can max it out in the low 3.9 range provided I keep getting A's. </p>
<p>Do you think I made a smart choice?</p>