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Comment by Salgat | Hacker News Reader

Community College was the best decision I ever made. Not only did it cost next to nothing, relieving a massive amount of financial pressure, but it took me, a mediocre high school student, and gave me the time and training necessary to build study habits and grades that allowed me to transfer to one of the top engineering schools in the country.

The only downside of Community College is that it is not the same "college experience" that you get with University, which I can understand is huge for many. I did to an extent make up for it my junior and senior year after I transferred, but it's not the same.

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True, but that’s probably an upside. The “freshman experience” is many things, but it’s NOT an easy environment to learn basic study skills if you missed that in high school.

I thought Community College was great too.

It was my four year college, I thought it was a joke, and upper division class worse. I once had a accounting teacher sit at the front of the room, and read the text book word for word. He did tell us class participation was not expected.

That said, going to a community college can be depressing.

Something like 90% do not finish their General Education courses, and don't transfer to a four year. They just drop out.

FWIW, I had that college experience, and it was fun, but definitely not worth the cost of admission. On the other hand, junior/senior year at college was fantastic and really formative. So imho you got the best of both worlds.

I think this college experience is really a PR thing. It's what you pay the most for and it is more entertainment than anything else.

Most countries' universities seem to work like the community college: it's near your high school, you go there and just study, the dorms for people from other cities are just cheap flat in the surrounding area, and you try to make your campus as small and focused on study as possible.

At least that's how it was in France, and my memories or universities are full of technical discoveries, amazing teachers and passionate friends. Not lifestyle changes, but intellectual ones.

The drinking games and parties, they stated at 16 and felt not very different at uni, just normal part of youth.

Yes, from the US side, I agree entirely. I think it relates to our Puritanical heritage. Parties / drinking are illicit, and most Americans live with their parents and kept in a sort of forced continued adolescence / stunted adulthood, until they “go off to school,” where they suddenly are free to do whatever they like.

And so there is an explosion of exploration, and only some of it is intellectual.

Echo your experience. Went to community college due to overall mediocre aggregate high school grades (but good in 10,11,12). Received 4.0 GPA my first semester and was able to transfer into my dream school after 1 year with a tremendous scholarship that when it's all said and done will have saved me 40k+ in student loan debt.

No regrets at all and am grateful for the opportunity to rebound from a lousy HS freshmen year and still do well for myself.

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