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.