The poster whose brother and brother-in-law went to community college before college again. Another thing my brother mentioned is that he felt isolated socially after transferring to his new college. It was absolutely the right thing to do in terms of academics and getting him focused on valuing school and taking it seriously, but he never felt connected to the community the way I did in college.

I did this. In addition to saving money, I knocked out 95% of my gen eds in small classes, rather than enormous lecture halls. If you're going to a good community college, it's a great way to get some more in depth attention. It also seemed helpful for some of the younger, less serious students to be in the same room as students who were not also 19 years old and screwing around. I was in the social work program and there were a lot of older students, international students, people from varied backgrounds. I would never have gotten that at the state school I transferred into my junior year.

One thing I will say, though, is that you want to talk very carefully with the school about the way things will transfer over. My community college had specific agreements with the school I transferred into (in Illinois) that the gen eds I took would match up to the gen eds they offered. When I got there, I was only missing 2 classes, both of which were specific to the 4 year school and not offered by the 2 year school. It does not always work that way. Sometimes the math classes you take in community college do not fulfill the requirements of the 4 year college and you end up having to re-take things. Since I'm not a fan of math, the only thing worse than having to take algebra and a statistics class in the first place would have been having to do it over again.

My cousin did this in Calif - two years at a community college, then transferred to USC. She's doing very well.

This can be a very good path but definitely not guaranteed, but then again, no path is. It is true that many students who enter Community College do not either obtain a degree or transfer to a 4-yr college, but you really want to look at subsets rather than general numbers. Some students attend just to take some classes or pick up skills without any intent to transfer or get a 2-yr degree; older students often fail to finish up for a variety of reasons. But if you go in with a plan, even if that plan is to find out whether college is for you, community college can make a lot of sense. One issue that someone mentioned -- a common problem with graduating from a 4-yr college is that often times community college credits don't transfer entirely at the 4-yr college, which can require people to take an extra semester or even year, so it is important to stay on top of that from the start.