<p>I was thinking about going to Santa Fe for 1.5 years than to transfer to UF, but when I go to apply to grad school, will they look at me like an idiot for choosing a community college over UCF or USF, both universities? I want to move to Gainseville for personal reasons.</p>
<p>They won’t know that you even got into UCF or USF.</p>
<p>but what if they question it? Like are community colleges frowned upon?</p>
<p>If you transfer to UF they won’t even know that you went to a cc</p>
<p>Of course they will see that you went to a community college, they ask for all of your transcripts. And yes community colleges are looked upon as lower than both of the schools you mentioned. </p>
<p>But if you perform well at the community college and really well at UF then it won’t matter much.</p>
<p>I have looked at many graduate applications in physics at IIT and it doesn’t matter whether a student goes to a CC, just that he/she does well there and at the four year school that grants the degree.</p>
<p>No, they won’t look at you like an idiot. Some students simply can’t afford 4 years of college at a 4-year institution, some people need to stay in a particular area for family reasons, etc. While courses at a 4-year institution ar generally seen as more rigorous than those at a CC, you can certainly be successful in graduate school admissions from a CC -> 4-year college trajectory.</p>
<p>Most of the courses that really matter for graduate admissions are taken as part of the upper-division program, anyway. Nobody cares that your freshman distribution requirements were done at a CC.</p>
<p>FWIW, I am a community college graduate attending a Big 10 graduate school. My father went from community college to a Berkeley Ph.D. There is certainly nothing impossible about it.</p>