<p>It is my dream to become an engineer, I just don’t want to get obliterated by the curriculum. Can anyone give me a realistic idea of how it is going from Community college into the College of Engineering of a big state university?</p>
<p>That will depend on the rigor of the CC. But succeeding or failing will not be the CC’s fault, just give it all you have.</p>
<p>Having made the transition (also attended a top ten private) I can tell you it comes down to individual teachers followed by design of the curriculum. The individual teachers will have expectations that may or may not match the classroom ability both above and below. The dirty secret colleges don’t want you to know is that the first two years of abet accredited curriculums are highly homogenized.</p>
<p>But I imagine you want more specific anecdotal stories. I have so far found my state flagship easier overall than my CC curriculum, especially if comparing only main sequence lower division courses that are 1:1 matched. I never realized how important small class sizes were for learning the fundamentals until I went to CC. Even a school like Carnegie Mellon still crams hundreds of kids into calculus and physics lectures. That said, I’ve already started taking some upper division classes and they are obviously harder/more in-depth and bigger time sinks than lower division classes. However, if you developed good study habits and took your foundation classes seriously you’ll be way ahead of the class average.</p>
<p>The biggest downside is that you probably won’t be able to take any courses in your major at the CC. A student starting at the 4 year college would be able to start sooner on the major courses and spread out the non-engineering courses over the four years. A CC student pretty much takes all the non-engineering courses at the CC, then crams in the major courses in the last two (or more) years after they get to the Univ. On the other hand, the courses at the CC might be better taught (or at least the classes would probably be a lot smaller) than at big state U. </p>
<p>You can probably get better, more specific info, from the particular CC and univ. Find out if they have an articulation agreement which guarantees that your CC courses will transfer.</p>