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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, it does unnecessarily crowd local community college. Such is the arms race that is today's college admission's scene.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Meanwhile, not really sure I think of Stanford as a CS school, unlike MIT & similar.
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...
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...
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.
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.)
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.