I am currently a sophomore in high school, and am eligible for running start next year. The two options I am considering are Bellevue College and Cascadia College. Distance wise they are about equal from my home and work. I don’t know anyone who is going to either place because our school is very close-knit, but I was never too attached to any clubs or people. I want to go into medicine/health/sciencey stuff. I want to commit to getting an associates, but am not quiet sure which one. BC offers a general AA in science and arts so if I’m not quiet sure what I want to do, I can work on. The major selling points for BC is how it offers a certification to become a nursing assistant which would allow me to get some experience and help me figure out if that’s the direction I wan to go in. BC also has a much larger list of extracurriculars like clubs and even school-sponsored trips. Cascadia on the other hand gives an AA in biology as well as one in pre-nursing (if I want to commit to that, which I am not sure about yet). So really, I am asking for any advice you can offer me on picking the college I want to go to, and offer anything reviews of the colleges/teachers/programs you have experience/heard.
Thanks in advance
- If you will be a pre-med, note that all college courses and grades, including those done while in high school, will become part of your pre-med GPA. You need a very high college GPA (overall and in science; basically any grade lower than A- is bad) and MCAT score to avoid your medical school application being auto-rejected or downgraded by the automated first screening before human application readers see your application.
- Medical schools do not like to see all or most pre-med science courses taken at community colleges, so if you do take some of them there, be sure to take some upper level science courses at the four year school you eventually attend. Also, be sure to check transferability to four year schools you would like to attend, so that you do not have to repeat any courses due to transfer credit mismatch (looks like grade-grubbing on medical school applications).
@ucbalumnus Thanks so much for the quick reply!
I understand the difficulty of the career that I have picked and how much I have to work for it, but I was more curious about feedback on anybody’s experience in specifically Cascadia vs. Bellevue