Some universities take very few transfer students. Especially among those that have a common core (like Columbia) and hefty and demanding distribution requirements, employees can be sure that those that graduate from those schools have certain experiences/achievements in common. The classes they’ve taken are (by and large) consistent with that school’s prevailing pedagogy. Graduates from Columbia, for example, have been (metaphorically) stamped by their common core.
Other similarly competitive schools welcome a relatively large number of students who earned associate degrees at community colleges. Some have contract/agreements that guarantee entry to community college attendees who have a certain GPA by the end of their 2nd year. Some have a formal “back door” into their school via community college. I’m interested in hearing about the comparability of the pool that started out at community college compared to those that were accepted to the school freshman year. What are your thoughts about it. And difference in the two pools? I’m interested in the comparability of the two pools acknowledging that there will always be some students in one pool that are stronger than the mean of the other. Are the grads from Cornell who started at CC indistinguishable from the pool that started at Cornell, for example. What do you think?
If one graduates from University XYZ, their degree says University XYZ on it…regardless of transferring or not. It’s the same degree being awarded to everyone else.
The typical employer probably would never know an applicant started at a CC - or if they took 6 years to get through and were on academic probation a couple of semesters. Obviously, a job with a background check, say the FBI, is going to know - but they won’t care. It really is about where you earn your highest degree.
The quality of the education varies CC to CC, some have outstanding instructors and rigorous courses while others don’t. So, the knowledge accumulated may - or may not be as good.
As far as alum relations, hard to say. it would be interesting to see some donor number for UC freshman admits vs transfers. Transfers have less time to form a bond, and don’t have that freshman dorm experience that seems to foster a lifelong affinity for a school.
Cornell does guarantee to accept a certain number of transfer students from CC (I believe it’s partly due to Cornell’s land-grant mission) but only to certain programs. I trust that Cornell has assessed that the programs they accept CC students to have base requirements that can be fulfilled outside of the University. Cornell does have many requirements that they feel can only be completed at Cornell in order to ensure that the graduates they’re sending out into the world meet Cornell’s expectations.
I started at Cornell as a freshman, but I do know people who are transferring/are trying to transfer from our local CC to Cornell. How they will handle the transition has yet to be seen. However, it may take longer in CC to fulfill the requirements needed to transfer, so they may end up being in school extra years. Does it matter in terms of employment? No, their degree will still say Cornell. Does it matter in terms of being at the same level academically as their peers? I trust that Cornell has quantified what courses outside of the University are equivalent to the ones taken within the University. If Cornell is going to accept transfer students, then it is their job to make sure that by the time they graduate they are at the same level as their peers.
It seems very unlikely that courses at a CC are generally equivalent to those at Cornell. If so, that would be very odd because their missions are so different. The CC usually cater to students who are often not college ready and who choose community college because they are ill equipped to go to a 4 year school. Obviously not all but many. If in 2 years those schools can take students who are in need of remediation and give them the sort of rigor Cornell promises, then that’s amazing. The people I know who went to CC were certainly less academically strong then those who went to Ivy League schools yet they got A’s fairly easily. And the few I knew who went from CC to universities, not Ivy League, struggled and went from A’s in CC to much lower grades. But I’ve not known anyone really well who did this in a while so things may have changed. But either the rigor of the CC or the rigor of the competitive school has to have changed for them to now be similar.
I would not say that the courses are similar, either. Since I am local in respect to Cornell, I took dual credit classes through one of the community colleges that Cornell guarantees transfers from. Yet Cornell did not accept any of the credits I had from these courses, and in fact a representative from Cornell told one of my friends that the courses at this colleges did not prepare him enough to even enter Cornell as a freshman. Still, they accept transfers from this community college.
I am not sure whether the transfers automatically achieve junior status at Cornell. Perhaps some have to attend Cornell for more than two years in order to catch up. I have always wondered why Cornell accepts so many transfer students from community college, but my theory remains that maybe the programs they accept these students into have much easier base requirements and the real work is in the upper-level courses. And perhaps two semesters of community college biology may be equivalent to one semester at Cornell for the requirements, although I honestly have no idea. I’m interested to see how the people I know transferring in next year will fare.
That’s interesting Ranza123. I’ve never heard that first year at Cornell is easy for students in any program. In fact the first (and second) year classes are often the most difficult “weed out” classes. Maybe you nailed it but for the opposite reason-and this would be horrible if true. But it would explain a lot too. Maybe the courses in the final 2 years are actually easier in the sense that the grades are higher, fewer tests and such (more seminars, less stress) and they don’t necessarily rely on all the material taught in the 1st two years. If so, then transfers are essentially skipping the most difficult classes and getting a “pass” right into the easier one And, then it might not matter that they are weaker academically. If so, the two groups are not at all equivalent when they graduate but nobody can tell from the grades or the names of the classes. IN fact, the weaker of the two groups may look more competitive-if they have all A’s from community college while their Cornell peers struggled with much more difficult classes and did not necessarily end up with A’s. I’d love to hear from some people with experience with how these transfers work.
You may be right – certainly my experience has been that the intro level classes are the weed out classes. But then the question still remains as to why Cornell still guarantees to accept a certain number of transfers from CC. Is it only to appease the state in their land-grant mission? I honestly have no idea; everything I’ve said so far has been speculation, but it’s all stuff I’ve wondered before so I’m glad you made a thread about it. I, too, would love to hear from anyone who has experienced this transfer process first-hand and has already completed a semester or two (or who has already graduated) from either Cornell or a similar college with this type of guarantee.
The not-very-college-ready students at a CC take remedial courses.
CC students looking for non-bachelor’s degree education (e.g. associates degrees, vocational courses, etc.) take courses aimed at those goals.
The above students are not in the same courses as the CC students preparing to transfer to a four year school. Those transfer-preparation courses are often intentionally very similar to popular four year school transfer targets (typically nearby ones) to make transfer credit administratively easy for those transferring from the CC to the four year school.
A concrete example would be a CC that offers the following math courses:
elementary algebra
geometry
intermediate algebra
precalculus
calculus 1
calculus 2
calculus 3 (multivariable calculus)
linear algebra
differential equations
discrete math
The first four are remedial level courses that cover material that should have been covered in high school and may not be accepted for transfer credit by four year schools. The last six courses are college level courses for students preparing to transfer to a four year school (of course, not all students will take all of them, since different majors have different math requirements).
In other words, you are not going to transfer to a four year school as a math or engineering major without taking the last six courses (or five of them since discrete math may not be needed). A student who only takes the first four remedial level courses will not be accepted to transfer to a four year school as a math or engineering major.
Yes, I realize that many cc have a range of classes but even Calc 2 at cc is not likely to be as rigorous as Calc 2 at Cal Tech. The depth and pace are likely to be vastly different. I chose a school that is likely to be among the most rigorous but the point is that courses with the same name can be markedly different in terms of rigor, depth and pace.
How you do in your upper division courses and in independent research, etc. is what matters. You may wish to spend 3 years (instead of 2) at the 4-year in order to assimilate to the proper level. Many, many students (including STEM majors) very successfully transition to UC Berkeley from community college each and every year- so much so that it is a “regular path.” UC Berkeley is one of the most rigorous and fast-paced schools in the nation.
There may be an adjustment period, but education through Community College is a viable option, and indistinguishable a few years out from direct 4-year.
I’d love to see data on that Itsjustschool. I’d love to see data on the comparison of the two populations on important outcome variables. I highly doubt that the two populations morph into one although I do believe both can be successful.
My husband attended community college, transferred via TAG to a UC, and then attended grad school, graduated with honors and is successful in his profession. One of the two most challenging classes he ever took was a community college biology class. The other was O-Chem at the UC.
I went straight to a university but lived at home and commuted 30 miles each way all four years. It’s what I could afford. My college experience was quite different from those who have the opportunity to dorm.
Even two kids who attended the same school with the same major and the same classes can come away with a big difference in what they actually learned and experienced. Transferring from community college is different but kids have to be determined and navigate a different set of obstacles to accomplish that path successfully. That builds some character and life skills that can lead to success as well. Different does not equal worse. That transfer in to Cornell might be better prepared for life and more interesting in the end than the four year student.
My only experience with this is a kid from my med school class who started at a CC, transferred and graduated from Cornell. If he hadn’t posted a picture on facebook while visiting his old CC recently, I would literally have never known that he wasn’t a 4 year student at Cornell.