I was in community college from Fall 2020 to Spring 2023. Two years after transferring to university I earned my mechanical engineering B.S. Now in my early career, there’s still a long way to go before I’d call myself successful. However the progress I’ve made so far is worth reflecting on especially since I owe much of it to those who dedicated themselves to my success in community college and those who walked this path before me. What follows is an attempt to distill what actually matters for community college students: a mix of lessons learned, regrets, and patterns noticed in those who made it through. I’ll start with some FAQs to get what most engineering community college students really want to know out of the way:
How much does my GPA matter?
Transfer GPA is everything for most schools. I’ve spoken to transfer representatives from most University of California schools, Cal Poly SLO, and more. You can be a phenomenal candidate otherwise, but if you’re applying to an impacted major (basically any engineering degree now) your transfer GPA needs to be at least up to par with the previous years average transfer GPA for that major. This information is easily accessible online.
Do I have to complete every course on the assist.org document before transferring?
Not really, depends on the school. Directly consult the representatives responsible for making those decisions at those universities. Each institution has its own set of outdated idiosyncratic rules BUT you will be a more prepared transfer student if you are diligent in completing your math and physics track while in community college.
Should I prioritize finishing GE or major related courses while in community college?
Be careful with this decision, you’re only able to transfer ~72 credits or 18 classes worth four credits each (depending on institution) so make them count. Come at it from the angle of preparedness, do you think you’ll be more prepared taking meaningless GE courses in community college or by diving into engineering courses? The answer is engineering courses if that wasn’t obvious. Balance this decision with the fact that not all engineering courses in community college will be eligible for transfer credit. Consult individual university representatives for the most accurate information regarding this.
Is university “easier” than community college?
Academically, yes for most schools (grade inflation). I was shocked to learn open-book, open-note, and sometimes open-internet exams were a thing when I transferred. Although besides academics, university is more challenging in every other way I can think of.
Does the community college I attend matter?
Yes if you have a very specific school you want to transfer to in mind. Many universities, specifically public schools, prioritize transfers from local community colleges. This is why you see a ton of Chabot Community College students going to UC Berkeley or Santa Monica Community College students going to UC Los Angeles. Transfer programs/agreements are specifically designed for universities to take students from local community colleges often called “feeder schools”. When selecting a community college, look for three things: transfer programs (such as the UC Transfer Admittance Guarantee TAG), available engineering courses, and available engineering extracurricular programs (hard to come by but some sort of rocketry or robotics club).
Who do I look to for transfer advice?
Avoid non-engineering counselors. Engineering department faculty are the best resource and on occasion STEM counselors who have experience with your major and desired institution for transfer. Or if you really know what you want, go straight to the source and email transfer counselors at your desired institution for transfer.
Are private schools or out of state schools worth applying to?
There is a common misconception that private or out-of-state schools are more expensive than in-state public schools. This is not always true. Many private schools will finance more of your education than a public school, they simply have more money. Similarly, many out-of-state schools have incentives for students (sometimes specifically CA students) to transfer to their institutions. In other words, apply everywhere.
With the logistics out of the way, let’s talk about the habits, decisions, and perspectives that shaped my trajectory more than any single course or GPA point ever did.
Work backwards
The biggest mistake I see engineering students make is obsessing over which university to transfer to without considering what comes after. It’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when you’re focused on the immediate goal of transferring. Do not forget that getting into a ‘prestigious’ university is not the point. The point is to cultivate the skills, knowledge, and community you need to become employable. Spend an hour to browse the career pages of some companies you find interesting. Take another hour to stalk people on LinkedIn who hold the jobs you’re interested in. Identify what they did in school to get to where they are now. What design teams were they in? Any professional societies? Internships? Once you’ve answered these questions, then you can find a school that aligns with your goals. I can guarantee this will be the most formative three hours you will experience in community college.
In your search you will likely have three epiphanies: extraordinary people don’t always come from extraordinary places, what you do outside of class matters more than what you do in class, and the most successful people have a publicly accessible track record of their accomplishments. Say you’re hell bent on working at SpaceX and you find a handful of grads from Georgia Tech. Some time spent down a rabbit hole later you find a few more engineers, some from other schools you wouldn’t conventionally think bred SpaceX engineers. Taking a closer look, you start to realize that these people probably accomplished a lot more with their degree than just finishing classes. They were leaders on design teams, e-board members in professional societies, powerhouses in their group projects. THIS is the reason why they landed their dream careers. Now notice something else: they didn’t magically start there. Their success is built on the foundation of their design team work, school projects, internship work, and likely some moving around in their early career from company to company. How did you find any of this out? Because they’ve kept a publicly accessible track record of their success that proves to the world that they’re competent engineers. This could’ve been a detailed LinkedIn, a blog, or better yet a blog with their portfolio attached. You are in community college to launch your career. Identifying existing models for success is imperative for informing the decisions you make during this time.
Release your inhibitions
So you’ve done the research. You’ve identified schools that fit your needs — and they happen to have intimidatingly low transfer acceptance rates. If you’ve done this step correctly, you’ve probably realized that you don’t need a degree from a prestigious school to pursue your dream career. But this raises another valuable point. Don’t disqualify yourself from challenging goals because you feel inadequate. You owe yourself the resolution of knowing that if you fail, it wasn’t for lack of trying. If you feel out of your league when applying to competitive programs or internships, that’s a sign you’re on the critical path. Lean into the discomfort. Don’t let impostor syndrome dictate your career trajectory.
Dunning-Kruger effect: we don’t know what we don’t know. You of all people cannot perceive your own competency; for insecure people that tends to mean you’re a lot more competent than you give yourself credit for. In fact for most students, competence is inversely proportional with confidence — you’ll find the more you know the more you realize there is so much you do not know (but you’ll never know what you don’t know). Therefore the only reasonable thing to do at this stage is emulate patterns you recognize in those you know to be competent with maximum effort. Leave the judgement up to the individual reviewing your application. Sometimes that responsibility lands in the hands of people who wouldn’t recognize an excellent candidate if one were standing right in front of them. Other times you might’ve not had the qualities they were looking for. Nonetheless, with every judgement passed on your ability is an opportunity to grow. You’d be surprised at how many people are willing to provide feedback if you just ask. There is no reason to just roll with the punches, take rejections as an opportunity to understand what you need to improve. It takes a lot of gusto to ask why you were rejected, but you could either try to improve or continue flying blind.
Use your damn resources
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve encountered community college students who are clueless on what they need to be successful because they refuse to consult faculty. Professors, engineering advisors, lab faculty, and even faculty at your desired institution for transfer are your most valuable resources. A closed mouth does not get fed. It’s that simple. Do not make the mistake of spending your years in community college not interacting with a single faculty member or making any friends. I personally owe all of my success to the community I found while in community college; the letters of recommendation, the internships, all of it. The truth is most of the world does not care that you’re a hungry engineering student who’d do anything for an internship. You’re starting to build that track record now and faculty are the perfect first audience. Convincing your faculty that you are worth advocating for will grant you access to countless opportunities. Once you transfer this opportunity typically vanishes so do not squander it. In addition to the networking opportunities, you gain more access to information about the transfer process than you could ever hope to from the average counselor or the internet. Ask thoughtful questions, implement their advice, attend workshops, go to office hours, do it all. Your chances for success turn into guarantees once you surround yourself with the guidance of faculty and support of friends in community college.
Tapping into years of wisdom through faculty and finding camaraderie with peers are positive side effects of a larger transformation you’ll be undergoing while building your community: becoming a well-adjusted adult. We are becoming increasingly desocialized and it is one of many reasons why so many engineering students are ending up jobless after graduating. Your competence is an accessory to your personal network. Learning to be comfortable with socializing with faculty and peers in community college is the rite of passage for transfer students who are effective at networking. The concept of ‘networking’ has been abstracted by corny career influencers. Networking does not mean kissing ass to people you think can recommend you for a job and it doesn’t mean overwhelming those same people with your pitch + portfolio. Networking is actually much more implicit. Networking is presenting the most thoughtful, hardworking, and ambitious version of yourself everywhere you go. Who you should present yourself this way to will not always be obvious. A peer you worked with on a group project in college could ring you one day to ask if you’d want a job because they remember your excellence as a contributor. Maybe a professor recognizes your competence and puts you forward as a candidate for some program. Be the best version of yourself in the right places and the right people will notice. Make friends with the right people and they can grant you the keys to the kingdom. If you’re anything like me then this will be an incredibly awkward, uncomfortable, and long process (it hardly gets better but stay positive). Community college is the perfect sandbox environment for this.
A shark that doesn’t swim dies
Earning credits alone won’t differentiate you. The students who land internships quickly are the ones who build their portfolios early and community college is the perfect time to start. Keep in mind while you’re just clocking in and out — the students already in universities are joining design teams, doing undergrad research, and building their portfolios. By the time you transfer, you want to be competitive with these students which means starting to build your track record now. Take this as a call to action: you cannot wait until you transfer to start building your track record. Undertaking projects in community college that prove to the world that you’re at least trying to be a thoughtful engineer is imperative. In fact you should see community college as a unique opportunity to prove that you are more resourceful than your university counterparts by taking on a project. It’s no secret that it will be significantly more challenging in your position as a community college student to pull off an impressive project but I compel you to at least start somewhere. There are so many open source projects on the internet that are becoming increasingly accessible due to cheap 3D printing and free software; the only bottleneck is your commitment. If you truly are resource limited, start small with a software project. Python is free and you don’t need to be a computer science major to leverage it: make an online mechanical stress calculator, try simulating your own robot design in Isaac Sim, use the petabytes of free satellite data from the hundreds of NASA missions over the last few decades to plot something interesting. Or even simpler, try reverse engineering something by modeling it using OnShape. It doesn’t matter if it’s rough the first time, what matters is starting.
Let’s put this into context. Update your resume to reflect your projected transfer date, this will give you an idea of your current standing relative to your university counterparts. Now go on LinkedIn and stalk your university counterparts at your target institutions. There will always be someone ahead of you, and that’s actually useful information. Now you know what competitive candidates look like. Use that information along with your research from working backwards to set your baseline: get your resume reviewed by faculty, create a first draft portfolio, build a simple website, update your LinkedIn, and submit your first internship application. Once you’ve done these foundational steps, commit to two applications per week. By the time you’re ready to transfer, you’ll be experienced at presenting yourself as a serious candidate.
Steer your own ship
If you ask ten different people what they think is critical for success in community college, you will get ten different answers. People typically center their advice and criticisms on lived experiences which are more than likely to be different from yours. You must understand that while you can learn from others, the path you take must be your own. It’s easy to make yourself nauseous trying to live every word of advice you get. Keep those perspectives in mind and reflect on what they imply about the world you’re entering, but remember you are the captain of your own ship. Take responsibility for your decisions and their outcomes, there is no one size fits all path to success.
Your move
The path from community college to a successful engineering career isn’t complicated, it’s deliberate. The projects you started, the faculty who believed in you, the uncomfortable conversations that led to opportunities you never expected, this is the foundation your success will be built on. Community college isn’t a limitation; it’s an opportunity to prove you’re more resourceful, more intentional, and more driven than students who started ahead of you. Transfer admissions, internship offers, career opportunities; these aren’t mysteries. They follow patterns, and now you know what those patterns are. You know what successful people do, you know where to find help, and you know what needs to be built. The only thing standing between you and where you want to be is consistent, deliberate action. Your time is now, start today. Your future self will thank you.