The community colleges around your area must be quite difficult. As I have taken classes from two community colleges, one of which is also a feeder transfer college for the UC's. The classes are much easier then regular HS classes. They are around 1/4th as hard as your standard AP class. Maybe you have a different standard for 'hard' than I do.
Direct from UCLA Transfer Admission website:
UCLA Undergrad Admissions: Profile of Admitted Transfer Students, Fall 2007
Transferring from CCC > 43.24% admit rate 3.58 average Admitted GPA
Transferring from UC > 36.15% admit rate 3.52 Average Admitted GPA
To me this says two things.
1) Transferring to UCLA from a UC is not hard
2) Transferring to UCLA from a CC is not hard
Sure TAP helps you, but by looking at these statistics, it seems that transferring from a CC or a UC are weighted about the same.
Whereever you end up going, it will probably be easier than high school (or at least that is the case with my public high school). Arguably, you will have a better experience at a UC then at a CC.
Hey, I could be way off, and could be missing some key information. I definitely am not putting down CC's as they serve their purpose quite well. But if you are graduating high school in the top 10% of your class, it seems silly to do all that work and end up at CC with the 50 percentile students of your class.