Why is Stanford Community College friendly?

Sonybd
Fri, 04 May 2012 11:07:34 +0000

Actually, the majority of top schools are community college friendly.

The ones that aren’t (e.g. Harvard) are typically that way because of institutional elitism and a culture among faculty and students that it’s unfair for a student to have 2 years of grades from a ‘lesser’ school, community college or otherwise, and graduate with the same degree as everyone else.

Others (e.g. Columbia) don’t want any transfers beyond 1 yr because they feel their core to be too important and unique to waive any significant portion, thus working against the 2 yr CC student (probably safe to chock that up to elitism as well).

Moreover, it works against CC students sometimes when a school (e.g., Amherst, Cornell) has articulation agreements with only certain community colleges, thus hurting the student from the wrong region.

And finally, it should also be considered these top schools have extremely low transfer acceptance rates, so when they expect quite a lot from community college applicants. (E.g. A 3.6 student from a fellow ivy might get an acceptance if something else in the app was amazing. Whereas a 3.6 community college app would make the admissions officers wonder why it is the GPA couldn’t have been higher at a community college with an easy curve.)

All of it is so relative though, and clearly admissions people care about far more than simply what school you’re transferring from. There’s so much that can affect your application more than that, so it’s best to concentrate on those aspects of your application when weighing your options–rather than a school’s perceived receptiveness to whatever school you’re coming from.