Attending a community college can be a wise choice, but if you don’t plan ahead you could lose time and money. If you eventually plan on attending a four year college or university, you’ll have to plan your classes carefully.
The first thing to consider is general requirements. Every school has different gen eds. Perhaps you only need to take one math class for one school but two for another. You won’t want to waste your time taking more than you need.
Each school has a different policy for which classes they’ll accept. If a four year college or university has an open relationship with community colleges, it will be very easy to transfer classes. They may even have a list of which classes they’ll grant credit for. Some will allow you to count that AP class you took in high school and you might not even need to take certain courses at all. Others may have strict requirements for transferring credits. You don’t want to end up taking all those classes just to find out they don’t transfer.
It’s hard to plan if you don’t have a goal. If your ultimate goal is attending a four year school, have a college or university in mind so you can plan ahead.
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