I am conflicted on whether to go to Rutgers or the Rockland Community College Honors program for two years and then transfer. I am pretty uncertain on what I want to study and I was thinking RCC could save money, plus it could give me chance to transfer to a top tier school. I was not a terrible student - 2000 sat and top 15% of class - but I was turned from most of my schools and I’m not sure how comfortable I would be at a huge state school. But it could be difficult transitioning as a transfer student so idk.
On the RCC honors program webpage it said,“A sample of colleges and universities that have accepted RCC Honors graduates includes Ivy League colleges such as Harvard, Yale and Columbia, and Tier One colleges such as Duke, Wesleyan and Stanford, as well as Cornell, Georgetown, NYU, Sarah Lawrence, Smith, SUNY and CUNY campuses, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and many more.”
http://www.sunyrockland.edu/study-at-rcc/academics-and-degrees/honors-program
Any opinions?
Did you get into Rutgers Honors?
DId you get into any other university beside Rutgers?
Your choices really are
1° Gap year - apply to another list of colleges and make a more strategic list. TOp 15% and 2000 SAT shouldn’t result in no honors at state school or community college.
2° Go to Rutgers, but it IS a huge state school.
3° Go to one of the schools that admitted you if it is smaller than Rutgers.
4° Go to Rockland CC and forgo the residential community of a 4-year college in the hopes of a better outcome 2 years from now (possible). Keep in mind that you won’t get merit aid and will likely have to be full pay where you’re admitted if it’s a public university, and top private colleges admit few transfers.
Finally:
1° Can your parents pay their EFC? Did they give you a budget below what their EFC was supposed to be? Were you supposed to win/earn merit scholarships?
2° How much does each of the colleges that admitted you cost if you subtract grants and scholarships, but not loans?
3° Are your parents college graduates? Are you lower-income, first gen, URM?
i got into the rutgers honors college for the school of arts and sciences and pen state, and waitlisted to a few schools. Denied from BU and NEU - so salty about that. i come from a middle income family and I have some savings but not enough to cover everything for four years.
Rutgers and other NJ state universities are likely the most common transfer destinations by far.
But if you cannot afford Rutgers for 4 years, but can afford RCC for 2 and Rutgers for 2, that may favor the latter.
With Honors at Rutgers, you must have received some serious scholarships, haven’t you?
Penn State Schreyer is awesome (better than Rutgers Honors), but the scholarship is paltry, unless you also got a Provost scholarship or something.
Loans within the federal debt limit at okay: $5,500 your first year, for instance. So, if taking on this amount would give you more choices, it’s okay. The issue would be if you planned on making your parents take on loans for you which would be a bad idea!
i didn’t get into schryer (i didn’t apply). actually, i’m probably just gonna stick with rutgers; however, i don’t think they gave me a financial aid package yet so idk how much i’ll get.
Strange how the RCC website doesn’t seem to consider Cornell as a member of the Ivy League.
OP: Your plan to transfer from an honors program at RCC to a university is one sensible option you have. The overlooked disadvantage, rarely pointed out to students in advance, is that if you ultimately decided you would like a high quality smaller liberal arts college, the admission rate for transfers is usually very low – often under 20%.
If you have already decided on Rutgers Honors, congratulations on your admission and decision!
I can’t speak for Rutgers, but I’m currently entering my last semester in the RCC honors program and I can tell you it’s fantastic. Some people talk badly about RCC (and probably every other community college in existence) but MTS honors is no joke. It’s definitely a challenging task and you pay so little for the education you receive. You get a mentor (which you can change if you two are not working out right) and the honors professors are always so willing to help with the transfer process.
I like your username.
I would see how much aid Rutger’s gives you before you decide.
haha, it’s weird to look back at this post; haven’t been on this site in over a year! I wound up choosing neither, because Rutgers actually wound up giving me little $$$ (just loans and stuff) and I did not want to live at home if I were to go to RCC. I was accepted to TCNJ’s honors program too, and wound up choosing this program, because of its smaller setting and aid / merit $$$.
are you happy with your choice?
the school has its perks and its draw backs; I might actually wind up transferring, because I want to change majors to something that is not offered at the school. I definitely underestimated the difficulty of the school- I thought I would breeze through my classes, but as a science major, I am falling somewhere in the middle. There are a lot of intelligent people at the school. Socially, the school is what you make of it. There are plenty of parties, and the school is 40 mins from philly, 20 mins from princeton, and about 1.5 hours from nyc, although there is not much to do in the surrounding town. The cost for the school is great and makes going there worth it (even if I don’t wind up staying all 4 years).
Where would you want to transfer to? Any particular area of the country?