Should I Go to Community College After High School?

Community College After High School

Community college is a great option after high school. You will save money and take the same classes you would take at a 4-year university at community college. If you attend a community college near home, you can also stay close to family for an additional couple of years. 

Additional Benefits:

Avoid application stress. While your peers worry about filling out applications, writing essays, and taking standardized tests, take advantage of not having to worry about any of those stressors. Community college accepts everybody! When it is time for you to transfer from community college to a university, you will have to fill out applications, but you will be more experienced and ready for the adventure! Also, most of the time transfer applications have less requirements, such as not requiring test scores. 

Start with a Clean Slate. If you complete an Associate Degree for Transfer at your community college, often times the university you transfer to will not require you to report your high school grades. Attending community college is a fresh start. 

Boost Acceptance Rates. At many universities, such as the UC’s (UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC San Diego, UC Riverside, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Merced), your chances of getting accepted are higher as a transfer student than as a high school senior. Some of these schools even have transfer guarantees, which means if you take the right set of classes and maintain a certain GPA you will be automatically admitted into a top university. 

Graduate Early. Some high schools and community colleges have programs called Dual Enrollment where you can take community college classes while in high school. If you take advantage of this opportunity, once you graduate high school, you will already have some of your community college classes completed. This decreases the amount of classes you have to take prior to transferring. You could potentially transfer early and earn your bachelors and graduate from a university before your peers. 

“My friends are going to a 4-year university but I am just going to community college.”

Think of community college as a launching pad. You aren’t “just” going to community college. You are going to spend two years at community college and then you are going to transfer to a 4-year university. Think of attending community college as a step on your journey to 4-year university graduation. You can visualize your community college to university journey on EdVisorly. 

Fun Tip: If you aren’t excited about staying home while your friends set out to attend their 4-year university elsewhere, if you have the resources, you could attend a community college that is not in your hometown. For example, if you live in Oakland, CA, maybe you don’t want to attend your local community college, you could move to Los Angeles, CA and attend a community college in Los Angeles. You will have to pay for a place to live in this new city, but your total cost will still be less than if you were also paying 4-year university tuition. Your community college tuition will either be free or very low compared to a 4-year university. 

Start to visualize your community college to university transfer journey by joining EdVisorly!