And the quality of instruction in community colleges is great. In fact, I was more challenged in my CC courses than I was when I transfered to CSU. I also had an astronomy instructor in CC who had taught at Berkeley and then another CSU, and he always told us that he taught our class in community college the same way he taught it at Berkeley. I worked my butt off in his class, but I learned more in his class than I did from even the best professors at CSU.

If I had to do it all over again… well, I might consider taking some community college courses while in high school, but applying to a UC as a freshman. The only reason I would do that is because if I were to do it again I’d major in astronomy and Berkeley has a great program which I would want to take from start to finish. But I’d take as much general ed in community college summer classes as I could before finishing high school.

In a different major, I might very well take everything I could in community college and transfer as a junior to CSU. I’ve heard from some of my professors that CSU graduates are more in demand than the UC graduates (at least for the 4-year degrees in certain fields) because of the reality based education you get in a CSU, rather than theory based. I teased my boyfriend (a UC grad) about this on a recent camping trip. We had to tie some rope to keep a tent up, and while the UC grad was reading his instructions on how to tie these fancy knots and when to use each knot, the CSU grad had already gotten the tent up with a couple of square knots. So the knots weren’t all pretty, but the tent stayed up!

“too soon old, too late smart”

Sadly how true it is.

Some states have a scholarship through their lottery system or other funding based on the student’s high school grades and other requirements.

My daughter was fortunate. She is a student athlete and so far all of her tutition, books and lab fees have all been paid for through an athletic scholarship. She attended a community (junior) college for her first two years and received money from the state for reimbursement of her tutition costs which covered the balance of her dorm room expenses and she only had to take out a few subsidized student loans to pay for her other expenses. Now she is at a four year university where every thing is paid for and she gets a small stipend at the school cafeteria for meals. She has a credit card that she only uses for gas and the bills come directly to me, which I immediately pay out of her bank account. Since she is an athlete, she is not allowed to work. And even if she was, there just isn’t enough time in the day. She still has graduate school to attend, but hopefully that will be paid for by the generosity of a third party. Like I said, my daughter is fortunate and will graduate with around (probably less than) $10,000 in student loans. I know that is a lot of money, but it could be worse. If all goes well, she will start out at a job making close to six figures and be able to pay it back quickly. We will see!

I think a lot of people look at the price of tuition and get sticker shock, and then don’t apply assuming they could never afford it, when in reality it might actually be cheaper to go to an Ivy League school than to go to your state university.