My son is accepted at SJSU for BS in Industrial Design at the School of Design. He did not get into any UCs. Given he wants to study Design, I was suggesting him to go for it and later on perhaps do a Graduate course at one of the more prestigious universities.
Do you think it is better for him to attend CC and then transfer to UC Davis School of Design instead?
Remember that he will be taking primarily General Ed classes at the CC, in order to be eligible for transfer.
For many students with a specific arts goal in mind, they can get discouraged without access to the college-level courses that were looking forward to.
My vote (just a stranger on the internet) would be to take the spot at SJSU, which is one of the more prestigious design programs in the state, and don’t look back. A UC, which by definition is more academically-oriented than hands-on, in the design field would not necessarily give him a better education.
If he should choose to go on to grad school, he’ll have an excellent portfolio from SJSU.
Use http://www.assist.org to see if the community colleges near you have coverage for the frosh/soph courses for the target major at the target UC/CSU. How good the coverage is affects how desirable doing the CC->transfer route will be.
But if he has admission to a four year school in his major, that itself is desirable in terms of not having to worry about course coverage before transfer, or whether he will be admitted as a transfer student. So if SJSU is generally suitable (including cost-wise), that is a point in its favor.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/transfers-major says that UCD design transfer admits had a 25th-75th percentile GPA range of 3.29-3.74, with an 80% admit rate in 2017.
http://www.sjsu.edu/admissions/impaction/impactionresultstransfer/index.html indicates that SJSU industrial design was extremely difficult to get into recently as a transfer, requiring a 3.70 GPA in 2018, despite being a relatively easy major to get into as a frosh, according to http://www.sjsu.edu/admissions/impaction/impactionresultsfreshmen/index.html .
Bottom line is, going to SJSU industrial design as a frosh offers more assurance in terms of being able to do the major than going to community college and taking chances with admission later.
I really want to thank you for your kind guidance