So, a bit of necessary background: When my search for colleges started to get serious about a year ago, I decided on one thing that has really narrowed my search and that was that I did not want to take the SAT/ACT and if I did, I didn’t want to submit my scores to any school – it would just be for me. From the beginning I’ve known that community colleges generally have their own placement tests for which you can take in lieu of the standardized College Board tests.
I’m a big fan of FairTest’s list of “Test-Optional Schools” and so I’ve been using that. 99% of the schools included on that list are four-year institutions but once I start looking for my other personal criteria, I’m left with insanely expensive private schools. Because I cannot dread the thought of graduating with $80,000 to $100,000 worth of debt, I’ve started looking at community colleges in the cities that I’m most focused on and they almost never cost more than $10,000/year for out-of-state students. I do feel like there is a lot of stigma with graduating with a two-year degree from a community college, however, but I want to hear some outsider opinions. Is a community college degree any worse than a degree from a four-year institution?
If you’re wondering, I’m looking at Journalism, English, and Liberal Arts programs, in that order. Ultimately, I intend to work as a journalist.
I know there are some specialty transfer programs from community colleges to 4 year universities. These 2+2 programs are usually a viable option. Community colleges do have a stigma, but that doesn’t mean the students are bad. Our community college has a small engineering program. The students there are extremely bright 31 ACT, 3.9 GPA students who could not afford to pay for expensive schools, so they came to a community college.
So short term, it is worse. Long term, unless you have a lot of freshman scholarships, then transferring or graduating from a CC debt free is much better than dropping out of a state university with 40k+ of debt.
Many if not most community college courses are less demanding than the same course at a 4 year school. Students have a rude awakening when they transfer to a 4 year school.
Are you talking about going to a community college and then transferring to a 4 year school to get your bachelors degree or ONLY going to a community college and getting an associates degree? Because if the latter, yes, there is a difference between an associates and bachelors degree; pretty much any job as a journalist (or most jobs in general these days) will require a bachelors degree, so at some point you’ll have to finish up at a 4-year school. Whether you start off as a community college or not, that’s up to you, though there are plenty of affordable 4-year schools if you broaden your search and don’t apply solely to test-optional schools.
Many, many, many people for a variety of reasons start off at a community college and then transfer to a four-year college later. It doesn’t matter whether or not there is a stigma. Your future employers never even have to know that you went to a CC, if you don’t want, because on your resume goes your bachelor’s degree and that’s it. Your diploma is never shown to anyone, but even if it was, it doesn’t mark you as a transfer. Even if you decide to go to graduate school, they largely won’t care either.
My concern is that you seem to be looking to attend an OOS community college in another state. Is there a particular reason for doing that? The whole point of going to a CC is to save costs; it’d be far cheaper for you to attend a CC in your hometown and commute for two years, and then perhaps transfer to your state’s flagship after that. One of the positives about CC is that they have guaranteed admissions agreements to certain four-year colleges in the same state, but that will only be affordable for you if you stay in-state.
Another option is to relax your personal criteria. Given that you are not going to do one of the things the vast majority of colleges in the country require, you need to be a little more flexible on other requirements that you may have in a college. That’ll give you a bit more choice/options when it comes to choosing schools. You don’t have to go to college in any particular city in order to live there after college.
Have you run the Net Price Calculator on the test optional schools?What matters isn’t the general price, but the price you’ll pay due to your personal circumstances (ie., do your parents own a 3-million mansion and live off trust funds? Do they make 125K a year and have a modest home? Do they earn 40K and rent? A 100% Need college may cost 65K a year, but while the first family would pay 65K, the second would likely may 25K, and the last one would only pay for books and personal expenses… A non-100% need college may decide to do this, or not, depending on how valuable you are to them).
Temple, for example, extends Honors College and Scholarships to test-optional candidates.
If you’re anti-testing, you may like Hampshire, College of the Atlantic, or Warren Wilson.
If you’re really into English and writing, there’s Knox and Sewanee, both excellent in that field and test-optional (Kenyon is the reference but you need a test score).
It’s really too bad you won’t take a standardized test, because the University of Missouri Columbia has an excellent journalism school (#1 in the country) and requires relatively modest scores.
People with only CC degrees don’t fare much better than just HS grads economically for the most part. 4 year degrees boost your income for the most part. Don’t waste money paying out of state rates for a CC. Establish residency first.