Asking YOU directly. No judgements here.
Our S started CC right after JR year of HS instead of having to transfer to a new HS for SR year due to chronic health issues.
CC worked very well for her and she completed 3 semesters and then transferred to a private U to get her BA. We liked the very low tuition, great food (there is a culinary arts program on campus), free parking, close distance from home (she commuted). She also liked that classes were very small and she was able to know her instructors, who taught the same material at the in-state 4-year university in much larger classes for much higher tuition.
I was overall very satisfied with the education I received at CC. I went to six different ones actually. It was quite interesting to see how they varied. My main reason for attending CC was the fact that I only had an 8th grade education. I dropped out of high school incredibly fast. Maybe two months? I had all A’s and one C (in home rest, haha), but for personal reasons and lack of motivation, I just quit. I did manage to get into some great schools (USC, UCLA, UCSD, UCB), so I don’t regret my CC days at all. It was something that I had to do given my past.
My DD’17 is happy at her cc. She chose cc because she could take a program and be done with her schooling in 5 semesters (no transfer to a 4 year), and she would have no debt. She chose this one because it was close enough to come home whenever but far enough to live on campus and not the closest cc school where everyone else from HS went (“13th grade”). She is applying for the Honors Program for next year. She has nice apartment style living with her own bedroom and bathroom, and 3 fabulous roommates who are very much like her. I asked her recently what she would have chosen if money were no object and she said she would have made the same choice.
I was overall EXTREMELY satisfied with my education at Community College. (I attend Pasadena City College in CA) I took roughly 79 semester units of CC classes during my 10th-12th grades of high school, and even though I was accepted to UC Berkeley as a freshman (off of the waitlist as a January-admit), I decided to spend an additional year at PCC after my HS graduation so that I could gain a real second chance at my dream school - UCLA (at which I was rejected when I applied as a freshman). In 4 weeks I will finally know whether I got in to UCLA or not as a transfer, and overall I’m feeling very confident. I loved my time at PCC, especially in regards to the small class sizes, friendly professors who care about teaching their students, and the variety of unique classes (for example, I am passionate about foreign languages and I was able to take Russian, German, German Literature, Russian History, and German History classes which aren’t common even at 4-year universities!) The majority of my classmates were very down-to-earth, unpretentious, everyone was just focused on passing their classes so they could move on up to transfer/ enter the workforce.
Community colleges in California are the secret back-door entrance/pipeline to universities like UCLA, UCB, and USC for those rejected as freshman, and interestingly enough many top freshman applicants who get rejected from UCLA/UCB scoff at the idea of attending CC and instead settle on a less-prestigious university simply because they need to have that 4-year college “experience” and they still hold the outdated negative stigmas about CC. I don’t think many people realize that although the acceptance rate for UCLA’s College of Letters and Science is about 13-14% for freshman applicants, its about a 63-64% acceptance rate for transfers who plan on majoring in non-impacted majors like History (which is what Im majoring in). Community colleges are the best bargain in higher education, and especially in California, CCs are the ticket to some of the nation’s top public universities at a fraction of the cost.