If I had good grades in HS, is it a bad idea to be a transfer student?

Transfer Students
1

I’m a senior and at least last year I was a straight A student and I’m pretty sure this year I will be too or probably have one B somewhere, and I don’t take a ridiculous amount and types of AP classes but I do take some.
My school has STI programs that I had applied to so my classes are filled with my Graphic Communication/Design classes plus an Internship this year so I feel like this is a great advantage I have if I wanted to major somewhere related to Arts.

But because I’m unsure of what I want to do still and I don’t feel prepared to apply to colleges I want to go to community college first. One of the reason is because even though I take APs I still feel like I learned nothing and so I’m hoping taking classes like English 1101 again in CC will help me. The other is because I want to know how handling college work is like so I kind of want to experience it. And the other is I might wanna try to get into NYU and because tuition is so high I feel like getting in as a transfer student is better.

BUT because I feel like I could only get straight A’s from HS is because of like so much types of ways to bring it up (re-assessment, summative homeworks, test corrections) I’m not sure my grades in CC will be as great as HS. And if I apply to semi-selective colleges I feel like they will disregard my things in HS and just look at my CC grades will this look bad? Will they not care about my STI Program and Internship and good grades?? Is it better to just take a gap year?

2

If you apply in your first year at CC, your HS record will be important. If you apply in your second year, it will be less so for some schools but others will still need to see the HS record and take it into account. If your record in HSis a good predictor, you will have strong grades in CC and it won’t make a difference either way.

3

The biggest issue is that, as a transfer student, you’ll no longer qualify for significant financial aid (transfers get lousy aid and never have access to the same merit scholarships freshman applicants do). In addition, NYU doesn’t provide housing to transfers, so that you have to find a place to live in the city, meaning huge rents and a pretty isolated experience.
Talk to your parents: how much can they afford? Do they expect you to earn merit scholarships? What’s your EFC?
If you’re not sure what you want to major in, apply “undecided”, like many students. Colleges don’t expect you to know what you want to study until you reach Sophomore year anyway.
However, that’s assuming you have a good GPA (2.8 for selective universities, as close to 4.0 for highly selective ones) and matching test scores.