<p>I am looking for experiences with transferring from Community colleges into universities with undergraduate Engineering. My son is currently a junior in High School. I have concerns about his maturity at this point and don’t believe he will succeed if thrown right into undergraduate engineering program. So, I am considering a gap year and then community college for 2 years and then transfer to engineering program. I see many community colleges have transfer agreements with universities. Please share your experiences with transferring from community colleges to undergraduate engineering schools. Thanks.</p>
<p>I went to community college for 3 years and transferred to my state university recently, so I will share some of my experiments.
*Community college
Pro: small classes, more chance to talk to the professor if you have trouble doing homework, cheaper tuition, no curve grade at my school, GPA does not transfer to university,nicer laboratory equipment ,communicate with other people face to face.
Cons: lack of professional event ( career fair, job fair),GPA does not transfer to university.
*University
Pro: more professional in term of class schedule and administration, communicate mainly via e-mail,curve grade, lots of engineering events and professional opportunities, career office, older building and out of date equipment, teacher assistants and professor are not always helpful, you might have to do homework yourself or work with your classmate.
Cons: more expensive (tuition, housing), lack of parking slots ( getting better toward the end of semester)</p>
<p>I just transferred from community college to Rutgers University (this is my first semester there). As far as tuition goes, community college first would definitely be the way to go, it is much cheaper. Also, community college would allow the student to warm up to the college experience much better. Since CCs are much smaller, taking care of things like financial aid, scheduling classes, taking care of any administrative issues, etc. are much simpler; whereas, universities tend to be much more bureaucratic and can be a real headache (for you and your son) if you have an administrative issue and are not sure where to go to take care of it.</p>
<p>As far as the education itself, it really depends on the CC. Engineering classes at 4 year institutions are notorious for laying heavy workloads on students and this can be a real shock if the CC did not properly prepare the student prior to transfer. By that I mean making the classes are challenging, giving the students adequate workload and allowing them to mature academically. I had no problem with this at my CC, but I’ve heard stories of transfer students in general who were not influenced to develop good study habits while at CC and were shocked with the workload once they transferred.</p>
<p>I would also highly encourage a gap year (maybe two) where you son just works or does whatever. A good couple of years in the real world will definitely teach him the value of having an education and allow him to mature and appreciate it.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I was a horrible student in high school (especially math) and graduated with a sub 2.0GPA. I went to community college for a couple of semesters directly after high school and did just at bad. I re-enrolled in community college in my early-mid 20’s, when I felt I was ready, got caught up, worked hard and transferred with 3 associates (math, physics and engineering, all with 3.8GPAs) into a mechanical engineering program. So if you feel that your son is not yet ready, give him some time off, or at least have him go part time to knock out the general classes (English, psychology, etc). When he’s matured a bit, he will appreciate what he is doing a lot more and do much better for himself.</p>
<p>I hope that helps, good luck!</p>
<p>@Soclydeza, which community college did you go to? We are in NJ too. I hadn’t heard very many good things about community colleges in NJ. Heard about unmotivated students, inexperienced teachers, etc. Was the transfer guaranteed or did you have to apply for admission and compete with other students? Did the curriculum in the CC enable you to get waivers for first two years of Engineering at Rutgers? Did you have to submit SAT/ACT scores?</p>
<p>What is the opinion in general about Rutgers Engineering compared to other schools out there? Thanks.</p>
<p>I spent close to 4 years at a community college before transferring into a Uni for Eng. I was a very lazy highschool student and placed at bottom of the barrel for college testing so I started from the ground up (my first college math class was arithmetic), along with working full time my entire college career. You can read more of my history here <a href=“Started with Intermediate Algebra. Is Engineering too far fetched? - #8 by ImUrHuckleBerry - Engineering Majors - College Confidential Forums”>Started with Intermediate Algebra. Is Engineering too far fetched? - #8 by ImUrHuckleBerry - Engineering Majors - College Confidential Forums;
<p>Now typically CC to uni students have to do 2+3, years (cc & uni respectively), if you know what program you’re son is going to transfer into, find their program of study and course equivalences between the schools, and bang out all the introductory math and sciences classes at the CC, along with all Gen Ed requirements. I did this and now I am only taking engineering classes and instead of the typical 16+ credits each semester, I have one 1 15 credit semester, 1 17 credit semester, and the rest of the semesters are between 10-13 credits. </p>
<p>pcotten - I went to Raritan Valley Community College (in Somerville). I know one year it was rated (might still be?) best CC in the state, and if I’m not mistaken, it was rated one of the best CCs in the country at one point. I thought it was a great school. All of my professors there had industry and/or research experience, they were motivating, helpful and made the student work hard. I’m not sure about the other majors, but for engineering/science/math the students seemed very motivated.</p>
<p>Rutgers and RVCC have a transfer deal, but people mistake it thinking it means a guaranteed transfer into a given school, which it is not. It simply means that Rutgers has to take a certain amount of credits if accepted. I know that Rutgers has a high acceptance rate for RVCC students, since they have a joint collaboration in many respects. So I had to go through the whole transfer process, as any student from any other CC would have to. If I’m not mistaken, they may have a guaranteed transfer for the university but not for a specific school. If you’re not sure what I mean, when a student applies to the School of Engineering, they first have to be accepted by Rutgers in general. They then have to get accepted by the School of Engineering, kind of a two part process. But as far as the student is concerned, they only apply once, so it’s not as complicated for the student as it sounds.</p>
<p>RVCC didn’t offer all of the classes that Rutgers requires for the first 2 years (most, but not all). So though I am considered a junior now, there are 2 sophomore year classes that I am taking now and I believe one more next semester. This is pretty normal though, at least for engineering, that transfer students will have to take on some extra classes that were not offered; some colleges are much worse with it.</p>
<p>I never took the SAT/ACTs but I did not have to submit them because I applied as an adult student. I forget the age (I think around 25 years old), but there is a cutoff point where they don’t require the scores. It is possible that they may not require them for transfer students. Logically, that would make sense to me, but I don’t know if they actually do this. You might want to look into it.</p>
<p>Rutgers is well known in the country for engineering. I know they have a vast network, especially in the tristate area. I know they are now on the top 10 list for public research universities, they have more rankings info here: <a href=“Rutgers University Rankings”>http://www.rutgers.edu/about/national-rankings</a></p>
<p>In my own experience so far, they have so many different opportunities for engineering students (clubs, intern/coop programs, research, involvement in different sectors, etc) that I’m really excited to get myself involved in, I’m just waiting until I get totally settled in here before I explore them.</p>