<p>CC’s tend to serve several populations, all of whom are in the same classes.</p>
<p>You have students who due to financial or other constraints intend on getting a 4-year degree but start in a CC. You have retired people (and sometimes working people in evening classes) who take classes for general interest or career reasons.</p>
<p>You have some students who finally got serious about education after HS when they realized they weren’t working hard enough in HS to get into a 4-year college, and our country can be proud that there’s a way for these people to get back on track (in contrast to a country like france, where a placement exam in HS determines whether you can go to college, and which one).</p>
<p>And finally you have the students that people often have in mind when they 'dis CCs, those who maybe don’t belong there. These days its somewhat frowned upon to finish HS with no intention of college. Many parents expect their kids to go to college, even if Johnny has no interest in doing so. The CC plays the role of bridge between HS and the “real world” for these students, allowing them to at least start attending a college before quitting.</p>
<p>And there are lots of these students! Stats show that about 2/3 HS graduates enroll in college, and that 42% of all students in college are at 2-year schools. And the stats clearly show this “CC bridge-out effect”; of students starting at a CC only 17% get a 2-year degree and 11% get a bachelor’s.</p>
<p>So not even 1/3 of the HS students who start at a CC will get a college degree (2 or 4 year). Some attrition is due to various non-academic reasons; people get married, have families to support, get kicked out of their house and have to start working, etc. But for many students a CC is a face-saving way to make the bridge out from HS without refusing to go to college.</p>
<p>A real interesting report called “Community College Students: Goals, Academic Preparation, and Outcomes” is at <a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/programs/quarterly/vol_5/5_2/q4_1.asp[/url]”>http://nces.ed.gov/programs/quarterly/vol_5/5_2/q4_1.asp</a></p>
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Have you filled out one of the online calculators? Until you do, you don’t know what your family EFC will be. Colleges count aasets such as a house different than income or assets in a childs name.</p>
<p>As for the overall college search, I think you should step back for a minute here. This forum is great for things such as answers to specific questions and getting info on schools you haven’t visited, but its doled out in bits and pieces. My strong suggestion is to build the foundation before you go out and start choosing schools. This means read a good book or two about admissions; I recommend “Admission Matters” which goes over the whole process, and after that “Colleges that Change Lives”. Think how many hundreds of posts you’d have to read to get the same amount of info.</p>