I will be able to earn a 4.0 in CC, and maybe a 3.7-3.8 in top 50s.
For top 10 universities, there is likely to be some difference of opinion, but I am thinking Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Yale, maybe Caltech and Dartmouth and Chicago. That’s eight anyway.
I don’t see any school here where transferring in after two years is anything other than a very high reach for almost everyone. Getting a 4.0 at community college isn’t going to change the fact that these will be high reaches. These schools take very few transfer students.
As such I see one major advantage of starting at a top 50 university: If you aren’t accepted to transfer, you are already at a very good university and can finish your bachelor’s where you are. If you do very well at a top 50 university, and if you are going on to graduate school, then your chances to get into a top graduate schools is probably higher than it would have been to get in two years earlier as a transfer student.
OTOH you could transfer into Columbia GS – which is the exact same education as at Columbia College. GS is designed to accept transfer students and nontrads. The big differences are as follows: 1) diploma is printed in English rather than Latin; 2) housing is not guaranteed; 3) FA is not as good; 4) you can take classes at a different pace – 3 instead of four, for example, in case you’re also working. Grad schools and employers treat GS degree and CU college degree the same way.
Penn LPS is similar.
Both Penn and CU are in the top 10.
Different colleges look for different things in their transfer students.
Compare Princeton and Stanford, which appear to emphasize non-traditional students, often from community colleges:
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/05/09/princeton-offers-admission-13-students-reinstated-transfer-program
https://news.stanford.edu/2017/11/01/small-mighty-cohort-transfer-students-joins-stanford-community/
versus Harvard, which appears to emphasize traditional students from other selective universities:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/2/4/transfer-students/
First off, the term “Top 10” is subjective and arbitrary. Ranking colleges is like comparing apples to Snickers bars and calling one “better.” Second…WHY? What’s wrong with the school you have now? If your focus is university brand prestige, you’re not spending enough time with your dreams and ambitions. Smart motivated people are successful because they’re smart and motivated, not because they went to Harvard. A true ambition should always supersede the college you go to, otherwise it’s really not an ambition, just a fantasy.