Core classes community college?

The main disadvantage to starting at a community college are that you don't necessarily have access to all of the same opportunities that you would spending all 4 years at a university. If you're at a community college for your first 2 years, then you can't start developing relationships with faculty members, you can't start getting involved with extracurricular activities, research, etc. Also, most community colleges don't offer the same range of courses and majors that universities do, so you may not be able to take the prerequisite classes for your major.

Usually, snobs don't want to be assocaited with a Community College.

There are plenty of myths surrounding grad schools and professional schools not accepting Community College credits. Most aren't valid. I'm a CPA with 20+ years business experience and I KNOW many very successsful professionals who began their college careers at a CC. Professional Schools measure the quaility of their applicants, not by the ranking or repuation of their preparatory college, but by their test scores. The GRE, the GMAT, the LSAT or the MCAT tells it all.

I did it that way and don't regret it for a second.

As you said, it's MUCH cheaper.

Community colleges tend to be smaller than universities and tend to have smaller class sizes, which means teachers are better able to help you succeed.

Smaller campus means not as many students-- easier to get appointments with counselors and other office services.

Community colleges tend to have more diverse students. There are, of course, the usual kids fresh from high school. There are also single moms, older people, working people, high school students, etc. Some people start at community college because they need too many remedial classes to be able to start at a university straight away. There were lots of support systems at my community college for all different things... not necessarily more than what is at my university, but at community college it wasn't as likely for anyone to slip through the cracks or get lost in the system.

Eri is only half right... there are certain universities that will not accept certain community college classes, but this can easily be figured out with a community college counselor. I used to work in the counseling office at my community college, and we used this website http://www.assist.org/web-assist/welcome.html to determine which of our classes were transferable to which universities. This site is only for California, but most states have similar websites set up that are updated on a regular basis.

If you were going to go to Med School or get a PhD, those are programs you get into after you complete your Bachelor's (or Master's for a PhD). Chances are, they will probably only barely glance at your lower level gen ed classes from community college, provided you passed them with decent grades. Again, all it takes is talking with an academic counselor to figure out the requirements and what you need to do to be competitive for admission for those programs.

As far as the second part of your question... some people are simply snobs. They think community college is for dummies or losers. They think it is more prestigious to complete all their schooling at university. They think their degree will be worth more because of the name of the school on the diploma. Who knows their reasoning?

It's not necessarily cheaper if you get good scholarships to another school. It's not a good idea if you want to go to med school; some med schools won't take those classes from community colleges. It's not a good idea if you want to earn a PhD; you can't get research experience at a community college. But in general, yes, it's a good idea.