My niece went to a community college for a year and then transferred to a 4 year, eventually graduating with a BFA in Art. Her CC art classes weren’t very challenging, but she was able to knock out a few low level classes in that and in her general requirements. She graduated with no debt and the degree she wanted.
@mom2twogirls – we would LOVE to have a guaranteed admissions agreement between our community college and the in-state BFA program! Unfortunately, the in-state BFA program college does not participate with the guaranteed admissions program, although the rest of the school does. If D19 went the community college route for guaranteed admissions, she would have to use it for an in-state BA program. (Most theatre tech BFA programs have a 4 yr in residence requirement, too.)
Apologies to @carolinamom2boys and anyone else who is considering community college for their kids. I haven’t see much discussion of it here and thought most were prioritizing four year colleges.
Our HS does send at least 30 to 40 kids to the local CC every year. They tend to be kids with parents who won’t let them move out, kids with a C weighted average, those who are really determined to go to UVA or W&M but didn’t get in, and those with financial constraints that made any four year out of reach. I don’t know anyone who actually went for two years and then transferred, but do know plenty of kids who are on the third year of their first year classes. I’m sure plenty of kids transfer their credits and get out in four years.
Maybe I should see if the guaranteed transfer agreements work for auditioned music programs and present that as an option to S19. .
Many are prioritizing 4 year colleges @eh1234 , but also believe that CC can be a viable option for many students. I supervise many occupational therapy assistants who can only earn that degree at a CC. I guess it is a hard concept for people who have so many options and financial resources. Not everyone does.
Our top ranked HS in MD sent 20 out of 458 this year to community college. Generally a mix of kids who are looking to get the pre-requisites completed and then transfer to UMD-CP after 2 years and a handful who do the same to save money and then complete the final 2 years at an OOS. I see no problem with either approach. Not everyone has the resources to pay for in-state tuition and not everyone wants loans.
@OrangeFish she didn’t do guaranteed admission anywhere. She had acceptances (after her first year of CC) to maybe 4 colleges? She did debate her degree back and forth a bit, so I honestly don’t even remember if she transferred in as BFA or not.
She had acceptances at Ithaca, SUNY Oswego and SUNY New Paltz… I forget where else. She had great financial offers at all but chose where she did for personal reasons.
She also later had acceptances for grad school to RIT, University and Buffalo and Syracuse, almost went to Syracuse but then decided to try working instead first and putting the idea of grad school on hold.
My only point is that CC was a viable path for the BFA.
There are. My daughter was directly admitted to Wyoming, which is a BFA and non-audition. It has a new $10M addition to the building (theater/dance/music). The head of the department runs a summer theater program in Montana and a lot of the students get job there. I think U of Northern Colo is direct admit
I don’t get the fascination with the BFA. I didn’t really like it. The students had to take a ton of lower level classes, all in theater, and still had to take all the A&S core classes, so it really limited other courses they could take at the school. My daughter is a senior, has now switched to a BA major, and is scrambling to get upper division classes just to qualify to graduate.
Great for her, @mom2twogirls! Glad it worked well for her. Shows a great example of how there is no single “best path” – especially in the visual, fine, and performing arts.
Thank as for sharing information about Wyoming, @twoinanddone ! Sounds like a great option for those students who would like to attend school in that part of the world. As for the BFA fascination – the number of credits in major really varies from school to school. On D19’s list, there are some BA programs that have roughly the same number of credits in major as some BFA programs. (I sure did not know that before.) I am glad my D19 is finally able to decide what she wants out of her college major.
Yeah, I’m one of those “even the parents of B students” whose daughter applied to 3 community colleges-- one local, two upstate with dorms. Those were her safeties. So even back at Thanksgiving she knew that going away to school was a definite option and that she would have choices, even if none of her other choices worked out.
Even worse from a College Confidential point of view, I attended Community College-- before transferring to a local university and getting my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. I’m one of 5 kids in my family, and even back in the 70’s college was expensive.
@bjkmom I’m with you and I attended a community college, but in the 80s. Heck, I have even made a career of it and I work there too. My master’s degree is from a large U discussed here often. I can tell you that each and every year we have students graduate and move on to amazing and elite schools. IMO, there’s no such thing as being shut out of college.
Wow, two CC grads on the same thread…and both with Master’s degrees! Who would have thought it was possible?
I don’t have anything against community colleges. My parents didn’t go to college at all and I absolutely would have, at most, a two-year CC degree if my father hadn’t passed away when I was in middle school and left a little insurance money that my mom generously saved for me. My older brother has an A.S. from a community college. We seriously considered CC as an option for D16 but she needed distance from some friends who were staying local. I realize that we are fortunate to have other options and I remind my kids of that all the time.
For my particular senior and his particular major, there is no guaranteed transfer agreement with our in-state publics, so he could take a very few required classes, lose his freshman standing for scholarship purposes, or complete an A.A.A. and still need 3 years of classes to finish the B.M. requirements. If his ultimate goal was to go to a selective instate public to study economics, CC would be the best and most affordable option to get there and I would be pushing the guaranteed transfer arrangement.
Anyway, this all stemmed from a post mentioning that it’s difficult to identify safety and match schools in arts type of majors, and an example of a kid who didn’t get any acceptances in an arts major. “Jane’s” situation made me realize that I need to work on my kid and get him to be more flexible so that he’ll look at non-audition programs as safety options and consider a B.A. even if it involves taking a lot of courses that he is not interested in taking.
DD’19 has been mulling theatre over again and does not want a BFA as she is not that serious and wants options in her course selection. The next place we want to visit only has BFA and minor, so I’m going to see if I can get her to consider the Communications BA, which is only 33 credits, plus the theatre minor. A plus is that the minor is free choice of any THEA courses, so she can even toss in some musical theatre classes which should please her. I don’t think she wants to pound the pavement in NYC or LA anymore, but rather work with children’s or local theatre or coach a school group on the side while working some other type of job.
My DD’17 is at community college. She is taking a Graphic Design AAS in 5 semesters, which has just as many or more graphic design credits as a bachelors does. She is just missing out on having to include 1.5 years of gen eds and misc. It’s possible she will be at some disadvantage not having the bachelors but I think she will be able to find suitable work. She’s debt free and happy- ever since she stepped foot on campus she has felt it was the right place for her.
I am hoping DD’19 won’t have to start at cc, since she is planning on a 4 year degree and would have to start all over socially after two years, plus the transfer merit is not as good as freshman merit. She has a bit better stats than her sister so I’m hoping we can find an affordable spot and stay in one place. Although she does admit the cement block dorms at most colleges do not compare to the apartment style/private bedroom and bathroom her sister gets at cc!
@bjkmom There’s more on here, some actually transferred to highly selective schools, but it’s not my place to out them.
Another community college graduate here, also with a graduate degree (a PhD in linguistics).
We are in a similar situation as D19 prefers a BFA, and we both prefer an in-state (lower cost) option. But it states on the website:
Combined with the BFA vs BA faculty assessment at the end of the second year, a community college transfer would ultimately add time and money on top of an already pretty affordable option.
All this time digging into the curriculum has been quite helpful though, as I learned an academic minor is possible with the BFA. This makes me happy 
as employability is important to me.
So my current thinking – a big push for the in-state BFA option and identify some affordable non-audition BA safeties. (Or don’t do what Jane did. 
)
I can without a doubt say that graduates of IT-related associate degrees at my institution experience far more hands on and quality programming/network/cybersecurity (you name the IT flavor) experience than any bachelor’s degree program all day long. That is notwithstanding that I do believe that the additional skills gained from coursework at a baccalaureate institution provides students with additional soft and project-based skills that they mightn’t otherwise get at a community college. Workforce development wise there is no better way to propel a local economy than a CC education. Each type of institution has its place and with open access institutions like community colleges, no student is ever shut out of higher education (like in some other countries).
@MAandMEmom – good to hear, as I teach some IT courses at one! 
CC with transfer to university is common in CA. DH attended CC, transferred to a UC for his bachelors and also has a PharmD.
My brother attended CC, transferred to a UC for his engineering degree. My sister attended CC and now has a masters.
Our local CCs in AZ have some really excellent programs as well. I’ve personally taken a class at CC ( fine arts, for fun) that was taught by a current ASU professor.
So as I’ve mentioned before, D19 was heading down to San Antonio with D17 to visit family there, and was scheduled to tour St Mary’s University yesterday. Here’s her tour report, edited down from her email:
You asked for this, so get ready for an extremely overly-detailed retelling of what exactly went down from 8:32 am to noon.
8:32 am
[D17] and I leave the house. We were both super nervous because it was raining and apparently roads in Texas get super slippery when they’re wet. I am a very good navigator, perhaps the best in the world, but I did mix up left and right one time. [D17] didn’t drive as scarily as I made it sound when I texted y’all, but the roads in Texas are insane, and so the whole trip was scary since we were both unfamiliar with them.
9:35 am
[D17] and I have arrived safely at St. Mary’s. We had arrived so early that I got to go straight in for my admissions interview. [It was originally scheduled for after the tour.]
9:40 am
We sit down for the interview. She told me about their automatic merit scholarships, and talked about a few other possibilities. St. Mary’s has a really interesting program that I don’t know if you know about where you can get your masters [in industrial engineering, her intended major] in 5 years instead of the usual 6 years that it takes. I asked her about playing in the wind ensemble, but then she suggested that I go for a music minor. Apparently her brother in law is working on an engineering pre-med type of major and he’s also getting a music minor because he takes one private lesson each week. It sounded like if I do that I can get an extra $4,000 scholarship each year, which is cool. She also suggested that I join the Marianist Leadership Program. When I read about it online I had really wanted to join, but it sounded like it was just for Catholics. It turns out that it’s inclusive for everyone, so that’s cool. It sounded like doing the Honors program at the same time as an engineering major is possible.
10:00 am
The tour begins. Our tour guide was getting a major in some sort of history so that she could become a teacher. The tour was good, although it was very hot and sunny. I couldn’t keep my eyes open outside and I kept having to suppress loud sneezes whenever we left a building, but the weather wasn’t that bad. We both now have amazing tans (sunburns?) from the tour. We had heard a lot of the information in the interview, but it was cool to see the campus. It’s much larger than I thought it would be since they only have 3,000-ish students. The insides of the buildings were more regularly pretty than the outside of the buildings. I think I thought the campus was prettier than [D17] did. There were a lot of cool sculptures around campus. The Smokestack is, in my opinion, the ugliest building on campus. It houses the Subway. The prettiest thing on campus aside from the, like, major show-stopping building [St Louis Hall—she’s right, there’s no accident it appears on pretty much everything they put out] is the bell tower in the middle of campus. It was apparently built in remembrance of the son of some alumni, which sounds sad, but I don’t know the whole story. We didn’t see the inside of the athletics building because the tour guide wanted to make sure that we could see the dorm, but from what the tour guide said and from how the outside looked you can tell that it is very good. Most of the housing for students is pretty far from the buildings where a lot of my classes would be. I can handle a ten to fifteen minute walk in the sun, though. [That is, she’s tired of living in Alaska, and would rather bake to death than freeze to death.]
11:00 am
The tour ends, and we are hungry. We used Google to find nearby dining options, and ended up settling on Lisa’s Mexican. It tasted pretty good, but honestly the Mexican food in Alaska is as good, sometimes better than any of the Mexican we’ve had down here in Texas. Except for the salsa. The salsa in Texas is absolutely phenomenal. [D17 begs to differ, says the Mexican food in San Antonio is better. Except for the one gluten-free burrito place they went to. She suggests never speaking of that again.]
TL;DR: It’s staying on her list.