Opportunity: Community College vs. University

Hia! I will be attending a four-year university for my bachelor’s in mechanical engineering in the fall, but am worried that I am will be wasting my money by not going to community college first. Yet, I don’t know if the cost of university will be worth it since there could be opportunities that I may miss. What do you think?

Since you did not name the four year school and the community college, as well as the cost implications on your family’s houshold finances, no one can really say much specifically about your situation, other than “it depends”.

Some things to consider:

  1. Price of each, and are the prices within affordability?
  2. Does the community college have courses that the four year school will accept for the first two years' of courses in the mechanical engineering major?
  3. How high is the admissions selectivity for transferring from the community college to the four year school as a mechanical engineering major?
  4. Does the four year school require enrolled frosh to pass another admissions process to get into the mechanical engineering major?

@ucbalumnus has some good points! Add to your list exploration of standing agreements which already exist between some two year and some four year schools. Many good four year programs have agreed arrangements for full credit transfer of identified courses. Matching course descriptions and good grades do not always tailor two programs together. I worked for ten years in transfer admissions and learned that not all math/science courses are the same. A solid pyramidal structure is very important.

Learn the specifics of your transfer choices before you commit to a two year program.

Competition is very tight for transfers in popular majors as department faculty loads are impacted. The more popular schools and majors will keep a very close watch on this at the transfer level.

Also be aware that the quality of the instruction and the competition is typically lower at CC. This can impact your foundation for the latter 2 years. You might pay more, but you will likely get more. As was alluded to above, it’s all relative to your ability to pay. Any advantage of starting at a 4 year institution is moot if you cannot afford it.

I’m not sure I agree with that. I have maybe 20-21 hours worth of credits at various community colleges in California and New York, and I thought the classes were just as good as those of the four year institutions I went to. In fact, I’d rate the classes at the community colleges better than the ones I had my freshman year at Ohio State. The classes were very small at the community colleges, while the freshman classes at Ohio State often had hundreds of people in them. I found it very hard to learn in the latter situation.

I completely disagree that the quality of competition and competition are lower at a CC. It depends which community college you are attending. I live very near one of the best CC in the country (Obama visited several times to hold up as an example to the country) which has many rigorous programs including direct transfer agreements with top engineering schools. Community College can be a great value and often have better instructors because they are actual teachers and/or people who work directly in the field rather than a T.A. which you might find at a large university. With the outrageous cost of higher education, the quality of students has gone up at community colleges because many well qualified students are choosing to start there first. Good luck in your decision.

I think some of you need to go look up “typically” in contrast with “always.”

My concern with CC classes is not the quality, but the content, and how that would relate to the 4 year college plan. I’ve been through this with my own kids. We looked at logical “chunks” of classes that made sense. For example, taking chemistry 1 and 2 at CC is OK. Taking Chem 1 at CC then Chem 2 at 4 year may present a problem if there is prerequisite content not covered. Also, in our specific case a physics class was not a major prerequisite for other classes, so that was pursued as well at CC without concern.

No fault of the CC, just different. Sure all the transfer guides I have access to say it will be OK, but in practice it does not always work out as clean. So if your plan is to split course work between the two, be sure to look at the entire course plan and how the prerequisites stack up, so you have clean handoffs.

One of my most difficult transfer cases dealt with the design of specific course taken at the prior institution. The transferring applicant had straight A’s in math courses with the same titles. Because of his school’s geographic proximity, our math faculty was familiar with the “closed end” design of the applicant’s courses. His courses did not fully develop the necessary tools to further build concepts needed in the higher level courses. In this specific case the applicant did not understand why a BS in ME was not the same as a BS in MET.

I’m trying my best to avoid academic snobbery here, BUT not all course content is the same with readily interchangeable parts. You don’t want to find this out during a transfer application. This does not mean that the faculty or the students are not capable or deserving from other schools.

Be safe, talk to specific transfer schools about specific prior schools before jumping into the program.

Also be aware that transfer applicants are highly impacted by movement between departments. Majors go through popularity trends in the extreme. One year a given major falls out of fashion and not enough second and third year students want a particular major. Two years later, everyone wants that major. Choice preference must be given to current students and transfers are out of luck.

In my worst case scenario, a high school valedictorian with straight A’s at the state university in her first year wanted to transfer in to study EE. Bright, energetic, highly articulate, she could find a seat in lecture hall only if she arrived ten minutes before lecture. To avoid this very same problem our EE department froze all transfer admissions. As an admissions officer in a male-dominated engineering school, I was also disappointed!

The best situation is where the CC has partnered with state and/or private schools for coordinated Engineering programs. For example, in NY in 1980s the Hudson Valley CC students seemed well prepared academically when they transferred to Clarkson.

Nobody suggested anything was “always” the case. Comparisons between community colleges and 4-year universities depend on which schools you’re comparing. But let’s not get snooty and assume 4-year schools even “typically” offer a better teaching experience than community colleges. Too many professors at 4-year schools are more interested in their graduate students and research than their undergrads.

Thank you all (I won’t name-drop due to annoyance).