I don’t know if SMC has many easy classes. That is the main reason they have such successful placement into the UCs like UCLA. I have a cousin at Pierce who was strong in the traditional humanities subjects. She normally gets B’s and the occasional A’s on her tests. She isn’t the most studious person, but she says she has to put in time to get good grades and her work does seem harder than the work I see from my friends’ classes at WestLA
I’ve been to six community colleges and Pierce was honestly somewhat difficult. I took a sociology class at Pierce and a symbolic logic course. Both classes only offered 100 points total. The sociology class offered no extra credit whatsoever. I forgot to do 1 assignment and I missed out on 8 points, meaning I had to be just about perfect the rest of the semester to get an A. I haven’t been to Santa Monica College, but my Spanish professor used to teach there. She stated that she hates extra credit because it gives students an excuse to be lazy. If she’s from SMC and had that viewpoint, I would imagine classes there aren’t that easy either.
I transferred from SMC, and most of the classes were pretty challenging… I took Dance History thinking it would be easy and it ended up being harder than my Biology and Anthropology classes. Just take classes that you’re interested in and it won’t feel like so much work. “Joke” classes won’t serve you well when you transfer.