Are there any major differences between one community college and another? If so, do any offer better chances of transferring into top universities? I live in Kansas so that is where I would attend community college, but all I see discussed on CC are California Community Colleges.
They can be drastically different. Some have shabby campuses and lousy completion rates. Others are modern and send grads to good universities or jobs. Many sources rank them. You can Google that. CNNMoney is a good source.
FWIW, North Central Kansas Technical College is ranked very highly for job placement.
Garden City Community College has a good transfer reputation.
Independence Community College is also highly ranked
Thank you!
Do you know of any resources that tell which community colleges send students to top universities?
All the resources I’ve looked at treat transfer institutions the same. They don’t distinguish between a student who transfers to a no-name public university and a student who transfers to Stanford. A resource like that might exist, but I’m not aware of one. I kind of doubt it, though.
OTOH, some schools keep track of students who transfer to elite schools. If you are interested in a specific school, you might look at their pages related to transfer and see if they have a list of schools that past graduates have transferred into.
Check out #6:
http://www.thebestschools.org/blog/2013/05/28/50-community-colleges-united-states/
ETA: I haven’t seen a list of CC’s with best track record of sending students to top universities but if I come across one will post!
I would be pretty careful when comparing the rates at which CCs transfer students to so-called ‘top’ universities. By definition, the sample size would have to be so small that I doubt that there would be statistical significance. If CC #1 sends 4 students to ‘top’ universities and CC#2 only sends 2 students, does that necessarily mean that CC#1 is twice as good as CC#2? (Hint: No)
Thanks, you guys!