9 tips on Community College

Reflections on my experience in community college which may come in handy to high school seniors and people returning for education.

Summertime is here and my diploma is en-route. There’s a few things I wish someone would’ve told me when eight years ago I got my high school diploma and two days later I collected my first community college syllabus.

So you’re thinking of going to community college? Or you’re a parent of a kid who may go or is going to community college. Let me just say that I have no regrets about going to community college. Graduating debt free with a computer science diploma almost feels like I scammed someone; community college is a lifehack. If you’re thinking of taking the CC road keep these nine things in mind.

1. Use your advisors

Too many students treat advisors like they’re the doctor and refuse to visit them. Whatever academic plan you devise may change over the duration of your time at community college and prolonge your time in community college. You have no idea what’s going on so ask your advisor! Treat it like the insufferable shot it is and go to your advisors as much as possible.

2. Don’t go into debt as a freshman at a university, it’s just dumb

With the Supreme Court almost certain to make student debt forgiveness wholly illegal, don’t gamble with your future and make loans when you’ve just gotten old enough to buy cigarettes legally. Heeding the warnings of my disgruntled millennial co-workers who were working alongside 17 year old me in retail to pay off school debt, Gen Zs such as myself opted for community college.

Community college is very cheap. You have more room for error, change of major and will pay little for it. You do not have those options if you freshman to a four year school. If you do screw up at a four year university, they bounce you to community college anyways to catch-up, but you’re still in debt and you’ve got more university tuition to pay. Be smart and take the safer option. However, if you get admitted to a four year from high school, its paid in full for you and you’re satisfied with the school, maybe opt for freshman enrollment. Especially if it’s a competitive school.

3. If you’re a bad student in high school, you’ll be an even worse student in community college

There’s three types of students in community college: those there to pick up a specific skill, those that are dedicated to go to a university, and those that want to go to university but are mentally stuck in high school. Do everything you can to avoid becoming the third one, for they are stuck in community college purgatory.

For university freshman, the major life changes they endure — moving away from home, getting roommates, school spirit and college orientation — send a clear message that you are an adult now. But going to community college in the same town you grew up, living with parents and no school spirit or major orientation, can make you feel like this is just the 13th grade.

I had many unresolved bad habits from high school. I was average at math but had substandard testing skills. I had poor time management. I didn’t learn how to study for an exam and relied on my “skill” of just winging it. I would enroll in community college courses thinking I could put off homework for the first couple weeks and eventually catch-up. Thus, math courses for my intended major destroyed me and I had to withdraw from classes on numerous occasions. None of which look good on your transfer application to a university.

I persisted in enrolling for classes despite not being prepared as a student out of some obligation carried over from compulsory grade school. I spent more time focusing on work and experiencing newfound adult autonomy than I was with school. It cost me two years with perpetual enrollment accomplishing nothing. If you’re coming from high school with a average or below average academic history, take a year or two away from school and experience life as an adult first.

4. Don’t go to college if you’re not ready. There’s no rush.

A classmate of mine, a former inmate who later transferred to a UC, once told me: “the dumbest people in community college are the ones paying to get a C.” There’s zero point in paying money (or getting grants/ scholarships) to get grades below a B, withdraw “Ws” or incompletes if you’re intending to transfer.

So many teenagers don’t understand that going to community college is an opportunity to expunge, not continue bad habits from high school. If you haven’t adopted good studying skill and independent motivation — don’t go to college. Doesn’t matter what your high school friends are doing, regardless of all their chatter about what colleges they’re going to. After high school graduation, you’re not going to see the vast majority of your high school peers ever again. College is a marathon all about you and no one else.

If you’ve finally acquired good student habits and motivation, if you’re laser-focused on a degree you want, only then should you enroll in community college. Do not hop right into community college from high school out of some indoctrinated obligation unless you’re ready. For teenagers, spend a few years discovering yourself as a non-student for once.

5. Do not get a job

If you’re in STEM and / or you have many demanding classes: don’t get a job. There was two types of classmates I knew that didn’t have jobs: wealthy kids and kids of poor immigrant households. The latter’s parents understood that their kid’s future income from transferring into a good university would far outweigh whatever insignificant job they have now.

Coming from a lower-middle-income family whose parents are American-born and didn’t go to college, it was very hard explaining to them the importance of education over low-wage, demanding jobs. They didn’t buy it, so instead I wasted time with full time course loads, extending my stay at CC and taking some of my focus away from classwork. I made it; I know many who made it work but a lot of people fail out or get stuck in purgatory. The benefits are not outweighed by future earnings.

Your best option is to live at home and if you must work, it cannot be more than 20 hours a week unless you have to. If so, pace yourself and expect your community college time to double. That’s okay, it's a marathon, not a race. However, a lot of parents think their kids can get jobs like they did generations ago but college is way more competitive now. Your application is up against others whose parents don’t have them working and are fully committed to education.

My advice for young people struggling with this is to get your parents to listen to your academic advisor explain the intensity of your coursework. And for parents reading: people with degrees earn more in their lifetimes than people without.

6. Get serious about your degree declaration

If you’re intending to transfer into a competitive major, your chances of finishing all required major-specific coursework and general education is likely longer than 2 years. On paper, they have to show it’s two years but it can only be done if you take maximum course loads each semester and summer classes. If you have a job its probably 3 years or more.

You don’t have to rush it but prospective universities want to see if you’re capable of graduating university promptly, based on how quickly you finish your coursework. They can understand mistakes and stall periods on your record, but you need to show somewhere that you eventually took the initiative and consecutively wiped your classes out. You don’t want a record that looks like you sporadically finished classes.

Before you full-time enroll in community college, know for certain what you want to major in so you don’t bounce around intended major coursework. While enrolled part-time in community college, take a class or two on a topic you’re interested in and see if you like it. When you’ve decided that’s for sure a major you’re willing to spend four years studying, print out of your academic plan devised with your college advisor and get to work.

7. Free money!

The biggest mistake I made in community college was not taking the free money that could’ve paid my tuition! Now tuition’s cheap at a CC, usually a grand a semester if memory serves me correctly. But I wasted time working all these retail jobs to pay tuition when Pell and state grants would’ve paid my whole way if I just applied. I didn’t realize this till my very last semester in community college. I applied for financial aid for my first quarter in university and got my whole university education paid for debt-free.

It’s free money, stupid! Fill out your FAFSA! But beware about certain grants like Pell. If you know there’s a good chance you’ll withdraw from a course, do not use up your financial aid money for that semester that could be used at university instead. The money is free but its not unlimited. Only use grants if you’re laser focused on knocking out these courses for majors you’re dead-set on.

8. Concurrent Enrollment

A big lifehack is that your local universities will let you enroll in their classes at cheap, discount rates. Through my college’s concurrent enrollment program, I was able to pay several hundred bucks and take courses directly related to my major at UC Berkeley. Since I had finished much of my lower division coursework at Berkeley, I was able to graduate from UC Santa Cruz’s C.S. program in just one year and a quarter, rather than two or more like standard transfers.

This puts you well ahead in admissions because it shows you’re capable of university-level classwork. I don’t know if this applies to other majors, but with Computer Science, the truth is that community colleges pale in comparison to the rigor of university-level coursework. Universities have a hard time attracting teachers let alone junior colleges.

In community college, my programming experience was solely running programs through an IDE and we’d usually execute one file as a project. It wasn’t until I concurrently enrolled at Berkeley that I first executed a program from the command line and had packages of software to operate and configure. I had to study aggressively just to catch up. At UC Santa Cruz, tons of transfer students would drop out of the CS program because their community college programs left them woefully under-prepared.

Universities know the rigor gap is real which is why upon transferring you’re often forced to take classes you’ve technically already done at community college. Avoid this by cross-enrolling and your chances of admission increase dramatically.

9. People like transfers

When freshmen admission officers review an 11th grader’s application, they know that most of their accomplishments and disadvantages are largely the product of their parents. However, as a transfer, your application is the summation of the work you chose to do as an adult. The officers know this and understand how uniquely that makes your adversity. You can make mistakes in community college. You can rack up bad grades and get too many withdrawals and still get into the college of your dreams. So long as you show clearly that you’ve surmounted it and its behind you.

Community college is the land of second chances. It’s the only place I’ve seen where single mothers get acceptance letters to UCLA and where former prison inmates become literate. Professors at university know that transfer students work harder than freshman admittance because it was their individualism that got them there. And it pays off with little debt and the same diploma a university freshman gets. Queueing up for the graduation stage with my friends, not a single one regretted going to community college first.