<p>CC student here. I am currently located in the Los Angeles area. Let me give you my perspective as I have spoken to many friends who enrolled into more of the reputable UC schools and how their experience has compared to mine. The student to teacher ratio is MUCH lower in a community college compared to UCLA and Irvine. This allows a student to actually have 1v1 talks with their professor and actually get to know them. They will even go out of their way to extend office hours and in one case I went out to lunch with my polisci professor. All my professors have come from reputable schools and tend to have many life experiences that make the instructors at the CC superior to the TAs my friends are getting at the UCs. It is almost laughable how much more they are paying for an inferior education when society has it backwards that University’s are the way to go right out of highschool. THIS IS A LIE unless you are going to a private school where you actually get what you pay for. I have had one chemistry professor who conducted research and taught at Caltech. Another polisci professor who worked for the CIA and taught at USC for most of his career. It is what you make of it. There are alot of kids there because their parents make them go who could not care less about their education and alot of adults. I would label about 10% of the population at my community college as actual intellects or scholars. Depending on what CC you attend, mine being college of the canyons. You have a higher rate of transfering than any other highschool or CC around. They even have programs that pretty much gurantee admission into schools like UCLA and not that many people take advantage of them so you will be more than likely to get into your school of choice. By the time you transfer, your going to be in all the classes where the student-teacher ratio has dropped compared to students who transferred right out of highschool. I am only one person and can only inhabit one perspective but after talking to many friends at UCI, berkley, and UCLA I am sure that going to a CC for your freshman and sophomore year is much more cost efficient and will not affect your education negatively. Message me if you want any more information regarding programs like TAP (guranteed admission to ucla from CCs) or transfer rates at different CCs.</p>