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> And it went against the guidance of my school counselors. They thought community college would hurt my chances at getting into "Prestigious Schools".

I mean, they're not wrong. You will statistically be less likely to get into those schools. Once you're a transfer student, your acceptance rates go down significantly for prestigious private colleges. (And some public universities too)

If your goal is to graduate from a top school, you're less likely to be accepted as a transfer student.

The program doesn't require you to be a transfer student. You actually get a HS and AS/AE degree at the same time. So you have the option to be a transfer student but you also have the option to go through the normal application process and have your credits treated as HS classes.

All that said, it is probably still more likely to hurt you on an application to some programs. Now they've got to compare apples to oranges rather than an easy AP student to another AP student.

I did the program and got into most of the schools I wanted to but missed out on one that I really wanted. I saved myself 1 years worth of college, and could have saved more if I'd planned a little better (taken engineering physics instead of normal physics) and a few more classes that would have transferred directly. Overall I saved about 2x on credits as much some of the AP students, which would have been 3x if I'd known better.

For sure, if you want to get into Harvard, you may have to forge your own path.

But I think for the average job and lifestyle people actually want to live, I think they will discover on their own how unimportant the school they went to will be.

> If your goal is to graduate from a top school

But why is that always the goal that counselors push? The data shows that future income is most closely correlated to major, not school choice.

Maybe they're pushing people to get the best school for their major.

I think going to Stanford for CS will open more doors than going to Oregon State. There is a significant networking aspect to these top schools as well. I see it very clearly with my friends who went to CalTech and Stanford.

It's probably not a coincidence that many (most?) of my peers in the bay area are people who graduated from top schools and/or programs.

OSU has quite a bit to offer that can jumpstart a CS career, like the OSU Open Source Lab: http://osuosl.org

Meanwhile, not really sure I think of Stanford as a CS school, unlike MIT & similar.

Stanford CS is tied for #1 with Berkeley CMU and MIT

Berkely (BSD), MIT (of MIT license fame) & CMU (Sphinx) have a history of notable software that has enabled computing for decades, most HN users can name software developed by either institution.

Stanford doesn't have that cache, despite what US News & World might say. US News & World rankings tend to be fairly subjective, look at their top 15 cities.

Edit: CS School Rankings for those interested: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-sch...

Are you seriously saying Stanford doesn't have the same cache as Berkeley, MIT, or CMU in CS because you couldn't name something invented from Stanford?

How about number of Turing laureates? Stanford has the most for alumni + faculty, and comes second if you only count alumni (to Berkeley), and comes second if you just count long-term faculty (to MIT), and comes first for short-term faculty.[0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Turing_Award_laureates...

I mean, you could look at Google, Yahoo, SnapChat, VMWare, Sun, and Cisco as "interesting software invented at Stanford". Not to mention TAOCP and TeX. Only difference is that Stanford alums tend to get rich off their inventions because they don't bother to share the source code (usually; Knuth is an exception) while Berkeley & MIT have more of a history of public-domain contributions.

"Top tier CS" school is pure marketing. Data structures and algorithms don't change based on geography or the amount of money you pay a school.

The quality of professors, lectures, and general atmosphere definitely do.

> I think going to Stanford for CS will open more doors than going to Oregon State.

This concept stops being applicable the minute you get out of the HYPS tier of colleges. If you're cut out to go to HYPS and want to work in finance or top-tier consulting, then you should go. I understand the situation is similar these days with FANG companies. Once you're outside that tiny range of schools, save your money and go to the best in-state school you can get into.

You don't have to be in finance either. The people I'm mentioning are all in software.

Turns out - some of these graduating classes from these prestigious colleges end up running a lot of the bay area. It's not a diverse educational background.

I think this is an uncomfortable truth for many people. People don’t like to admit that their performance at the time they got admitted to college is a reflection of their status and future ability but it unfortunately is.

AP isn’t the worst thing in the world. I technically entered college as a junior. I still took four years, but I got preference in picking my courses, dabbled with extra math classes (was going for a minor but it would have taken me past 4yrs which is all I had funding for), and I changed my major slightly.

You have the option of going as a normal student. If you do, top-tier colleges usually look at college and AP courses taken at other institutions as a bonus towards admission.

I went to Amherst College (#1 liberal arts college in the U.S. when I matriculated), having taken courses at Harvard Extension School, UMass Lowell, and Boston University as a high-schooler. They didn't give me credit for any of them, nor for the 8 AP tests I passed. However, I was told that they were a big plus on my otherwise-lackluster application. The fact that I could take and ace college courses at other institutions was a great way to nullify the fact that I was failing my high-school courses.

My sister did courses at Middlesex Community College (again, through the same MA dual-enrollment program that I used) and went to Rice University and my wife did courses at Foothill Community College (through CA's dual-enrollment program) and went to UC Berkeley, so not an isolated experience.

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying it's just less likely. The admissions statistics for these universities show that. After all, they really only admit transfer students to fill in for students who dropped out of their school. They base class size solely on the freshmen class.

In your case, I don't think you were applying as a transfer student. You were also not going to your local CC. Those universities are a higher tier than your local CC.

In the case of "running start" the whole premise is that you have 2 years of college completed when you graduate. Not that you spent 2 years doing college courses to just restart from level 1. You can do that but I think it's a waste of resources and will unnecessarily crowd local community colleges. And it did where I went to community college. I had to deal with a bunch of 14-17 year old high school age kids. >=25% of the student body was high schoolers with some of my classes at 50%+. Gets kind of annoying when you have to constantly deal with those kids still being kids.

I wasn't applying as a transfer student, and I'm saying that it absolutely does make sense to restart from level 1 if you get into a high-tier university, and that doing so can help you get into such a high-tier university.

Yes, it does unnecessarily crowd local community college. Such is the arms race that is today's college admission's scene.

You're not considered a transfer student when you do Running Start. As long as you haven't actually graduated high school when taking the community college classes, you're considered a freshman applicant when applying to colleges. It's offered as a better alternative to just taking more AP or IB classes, which are also 'college level'.

It depends on the school. Dual-enrollment often does not count as entering college to the eyes of admissions committees. However, if you enter in a full-time degree program, you may be required to apply as a transfer student.

http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/transfer/index.h...

> You're a transfer student if you enrolled in a regular session (fall, winter or spring) at a college or university after high school. (Taking a class or two during the summer term immediately following high school graduation doesn’t make you a transfer student.)

https://admission.stanford.edu/apply/transfer/credit.html

> Students who have enrolled either full-time or as a degree-seeking student after leaving high school or through an early college entrance program must apply for transfer admission.

I went to Utah Valley State College and was accepted into the Georgia Tech's ONLINE machine learning master's program-- But maybe that had to do with me being an Adobe employee and less about my less-than-impressive selection of college. Or maybe it was because it was the online program. Furthermore, I've never taken the SAT or ACT.

Thanks for this. I was planning to try this from a similar background. I am glad to know it is at least possible...

I imagine you just wouldn't apply as a transfer student.

Texas has a program called TAMS where you take your 11th and 12th grade classes at the University of North Texas. While some students "transfer" at the end (I think to do an end run around UT Austin's 10% rule?), most apply to college as normal high school seniors.

I wonder if that's a biased sample.

Top % of students likely transfer less often than bottom %.

Therefore transfer pool often has students from lower %. And statistically the applicants are worse than from initial application.

However that doesn't mean ones ods are less doing a transfer. It might be better given the transfer peers overall worse applications.

(This is all conjecture. I have no actual stats.)

I was a Running Start alum as well (along with many of my friends). If you're in Pullman, you can take courses at Washington State University. It was incredible for me - for my friends who went to UW or WSU after graduation, they got 2 years of college credit and many graduated early. I went out of state and was able to skip introductory courses, and having already been to college in high school meant I was way more mature than many other students.

Honestly, for the cost of the program, it is extremely impactful. I didn't feel like I missed out on high school much either - I still took half my classes there.

I guess to counter the idea that it hurts on college applications: I can't say anything definite, of course, but I'm fairly certain taking physics at WSU looks much better on an application than taking your high school's physics. You look like a more ambitious and capable student.

You lived in Pullman and didn't attend WSU after high school? I'm quite curious about this. I thought WSU was awesome and if I could have gone without as much debt (living at home) I would have in a heartbeat! Also, the Palouse is such a fantastic place. Pullman in summers was the best. Were you just tired of it by the time you graduated?

The Palouse is really beautiful, but honestly I felt like I'd kind of grown past Pullman by the time I finished high school - you can only go bowling at Zeppoz so many times :)

Running Start alumni here. It's an amazing program, but I often wonder if it was the right decision. Leaving high school at 10th (of 12) grade had a major impact on my life. I lost out on those long term friendships, prom, senior year, graduation, and the collective preparation for college, as well as missing out on freshman year OF university, etc. I don't have high school reunions to attend. In the end, it didn't catapult me to anything special, just saved my parents a lot of money on tuition.

> I lost out on those long term friendships, prom, senior year, graduation, and the collective preparation for college, as well as missing out on freshman year OF university, etc.

The importance of these "experiences" is garbage baby boomers feed young people because they're the decadent generation. Most generations prior to them never had those things. (It wasn't until WWII that more than 50% of Americans graduated high school.) I skipped senior prom to go to a robotics competition. I assume I attended graduation, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you where it was or anything that happened. I have plenty of friends from college and law school. I missed my 10-year high school reunion because my daughter was born the same week, but as far as I can tell from the pictures it was in a large basement of some sort.

>The importance of these "experiences" is garbage baby boomers feed young people because they're the decadent generation

This abject bitterness is only a minor counterpoint to harmless rituals held by many many people.

Outside of the MAGA contingent, people hope to build a better life than the previous generation had. Working 50 years at the steel mill isn't the American Dream.

If you live your life in a bubble apart from the rest of humanity, and you are happy, good for you. If you couldn't find friends in high school, sympathy for you. But most humans are social creatures who put value on having community.

Working in a steel mill would be a much more valuable life experience than senior year of high school for most people. And it’s not like people in the 1930s didn’t have community. To the contrary, they had much more of it than we do these days, where everyone leaves their home town to go office to college, chasing a school a few points higher on some ranking.

> I lost out on those long term friendships

That would still have happened, only two years later.

> I don't have high school reunions to attend.

Is this an american thing? I am living in Germany and I know plenty of people that don't care about high school reunions at all.

I don't know your situation, but you might be idealizing.

I went to a similar program, I personally loved it. It's not for everyone, but for me it was amazing.

The 7 AM to 4 PM schedule of high schools is just insane. No kid needs to be at school that long, and that early. And most classes give out excessive homework on top of that.

Conventional high schools are infantilizing, harmful to health (waking up at 6 AM to get to class is absurd), and teach people to hate learning. And if you're not a social butterfly you can expect to be bullied as well.

My eldest has chosen the CC route, started by graduating HS early and been taking CC classes in the spring and now summer. So far so good, and is really teaching him about where he wants to take his education.

Wish I would have done this 25+ years ago, as someone who does indeed feel like my college degree from a "Prestigious School" was not worth the time and money investment.

I too did this and ended up graduating with an associates as a High School Senior. Back in my day, that was automatic admission to the UW as a Junior.

This program is called running start. It's amazing. All you pay for is books.

IF you transfer in state the college has to take the credit. If you transfer out of state you're typically treated as an AP student. (My experience 15 years ago).

Does anyone here have good research on the difficulty of getting into elite schools as a transfer student? I tried to do a little research and found this page:

https://www.collegetransitions.com/transfer-admission-rates

Which seems to indicate it's slightly harder, but not by much. But, I'm concerned that your average transfer student looks a lot different from your average freshman, so I don't really believe the stats; for example I could imagine that your average transfer student has somehow "failed to launch" at their current institution, implying they're a weaker student than your average freshman application. Or, I could imagine the other way around; they've already succeeded at a community college, so they are actually stronger than your average freshman applicant and these stats are underrating how hard it is to get a transfer.

I was also a running start student. I think that it was not a good choice for me. I was not well prepared for the responsibilities of managing my time, and had no desire to think long term. I doubt I'm alone, or even unusual. I know I would have gotten more out of my education had I waited a few years.

I think community college is fantastic, but I'm not so sure about starting so young.

You have to fail in order to learn. And it's much better to fail at college when you're not liable for ridiculous loan debt, and still living at home.

I did this in North Carolina. I’m still not sure if it was a good decision or not - the degree I received is useless and counts negatively towards “prestigious” schools (didn’t get into any and it haunts me to this day)