As a high school senior, Elissa Sanford considered attending both two- and four-year colleges. Ultimately she decided to go to a .
Sanford, now 21, said she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, so she thought, “I might as well go to a community college and save money,” she says. She graduated from Virginia’s in 2014 with an associate degree. “It’s pretty much the same classes that you would take anywhere, at least for the first two years. So it kind of just seemed like the smart decision.”
Sanford is now finishing up her bachelor’s degree in biology at , also in Virginia, and hopes to attend .
Attending a community college may be the right decision for some high school graduates. Aside from offering students a low-cost education, community colleges can give them more personalized attention and be a steppingstone toward a four-year institution.
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But teens considering attending community colleges after high school should be aware that the community college environment is often different from that of a typical , including in the following four ways.
1. Most community colleges are commuter schools. Students won’t be able to experience living on campus at most community colleges, .
Jordan Kindle, 22, says that when he attended , a community college in , his 20- to 30-minute commute made it challenging to get involved. in Illinois.
2. The student population at community colleges can be more diverse. Community college students . Most students work, and some have families.
But the diverse population can be an advantage for students, says Karen Goos, dean of student development and enrollment management at Metropolitan Community College–Longview in . She has also worked at several four-year universities.
Community college students have the opportunity to get to know people they might not otherwise have met, she says, and thus be exposed to different cultures, age groups and more.
When she worked at four-year colleges, the majority of students were intending to live on campus and “breathe, eat, live, — everything was about going to a college campus,” she says. But at her community college, even if students are of traditional college-going age, they have to balance a job or other priorities.
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3. Getting involved may require more effort at a community college. Most community colleges offer the same kind of extracurricular activities found at traditional four-year colleges and universities, like clubs, athletics and student events.
But at the , says Michael Cunningham, dean of students at the school, many students work and don’t have much time to be involved in anything other than getting a degree or taking classes.
And it can be a challenge to get together busy students for non-classroom activities and programs, he says.
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