Hello!
I’ve been attending a community college now for the past four (4) years. That’s right, four years. I decided to hop straight into my local community college after graduating high school in 2013, but I’ve significantly delayed my time there due to the lack of motivation to achieve exceptionally in my classes (along with having no clear direction as to what field of study I’d like to pursue). Needless to say, I will be graduating from this particular college in May of 2017 with an associate’s degree in general studies. I believe my grade-point average will be closely around 3.2 by the time this is all said and done.
So with that said, it was not until 2015 that I started to have this desire to actually do well in college. I remember going part-time during the spring semester, taking a course in general chemistry, and doing incredibly well thanks this newfound motivation to succeed (especially after being worried about the course–I did not have a strong science background during my high school years).
Another added benefit would be that I have accumulated no debt throughout the four years that I have been at this college.
This issue, however, is my competitiveness. Of all things I want to pursue, I have been looking at the idea of majoring in Chemical Engineering with an emphasis towards pre-medical. That might not make any sense, but basically; I find both engineering and medicine interesting. My advisor worked up a plan to where I could major (potentially) in the aforementioned field and, by some silly chance that I decide to not go into the medical field, I could fall back on my bachelor’s degree. I am satisfied with this plan and I’m all for pursuing it.
Yet… the earlier records of my community college transcript haunt me.
I want to transfer out-of-state preferably, and the college I have been looking into does not have a credit transfer agreement with my community college. I want to go ahead and attend this university and practically re-do my academics, use my motivation that I’ve had going for a while now to excel in those courses, and get into the university’s chemical engineering program. Simply transferring into it as a junior would seem problematic due to how competitive I am, yet I am sitting at quite a number of college credits already at the community college I am already attending.
So I suppose my question is: is it entirely possible for me to simply transfer out-of-state, re-do all of the general (core) credits needed with competitive grades, and break into a competitive field’s program that way? Would the consequence of losing the transferrable credits (and re-doing them at the university) offset the chance of getting into a program that I otherwise would not be able to?
Hopefully this makes sense in some way. Any and all recommendations are appreciated, and apologies in advance if this question has ever been asked before or if I’m posting in the wrong sub-forum. Having to think this through on my own is starting to drive me crazy, haha.
Cost is not a concern here, by the way. I know it probably should be, but I’m just more worried about having a way to get into a program I would be interested in verses settling for a degree I’m not interested in later down the road.