Last month, I looked at some advantages attending a community college after high school had over beginning at a university. This month, I’ll take a look at the transition between community college and university and the differences in the programs those different types of schools have.
Indeed, many students attend community college without ever intending to transfer to a university. In fact, one purpose of community colleges is that they provide skills-based training that simply don’t require education beyond a couple of years. Often, these programs provide some sort of technical certificate or prepare a student to pass a test that leads to industry certification. Examples of these programs include plumbing, cosmetology, welding, and dental hygiene. While these usually don’t require years upon years of education, the skills that these programs teach are in demand and jobs in these areas can provide a stable income throughout a career.
Students who pursue this route are likely to finish with a technical certificate or perhaps a A.A.S (Associate of Applied Science) or A.G.S (Associate in General Studies) degree. This is typically the end of the educational line for these students. However, many students will attend community college with the hopes of later transferring to a four year university. These students will most likely be working towards an A.A. (Associate of Arts) or A.S. (Associate of Science) degree. Which one of those will depend on the focus of the student’s course work. These degrees typically comprise half or 60 hours of the credits needed to obtain a bachelor’s degree at a university.
It’s worth noting that there is growing number of traditional community colleges that offer a limited number of programs that end with a bachelor’s degree. Some of these schools no longer refer to themselves as “community colleges”. Rather, they may drop the “community” and just call themselves a college. They do though still provide mostly two-year or technical degrees which are generally not available at four-year universities. Nevertheless, the four year programs that are offered at the traditional community colleges are an excellent way to earn a bachelor’s degree in common fields like medicine and education. These usually come at a fraction of the cost compared to what you’d pay for the same degree at a traditional four-year school.
Still, many students hope to get their two years in at a community college before transitioning to a university. There are some important strategies to employ here in order to meet that goal and the key is planning. At the end of the two years at the community college, the student should be ready to enter classes that are exclusive to their major at the university. So, they need to focus on their intended major’s pre-requisites as they pursue their A.A. or A.S. What the universities don’t want to see is a junior who needs a year of classes at the university before they are prepared to get their hands dirty in their major. This means that community college students hoping to transfer to a university need to be familiar with what the four-year school expects of their freshman and sophomores. They would do well to target a specific four-university prior to the start of the community college and understand that school’s degree tracking for the program they are interested in. By taking the classes proposed by the university for their freshman and sophomore year at the community college, these students will put themselves in a much better position to be accepted to the university of their choice.
