A lot of really interesting “good old time” comments here. I went and did the whole dorm/freshman/sophomore thing before living off campus in the apartments and DO agree that you can never make that time up as you get older and I really enjoyed it. If I didn’t get to experience that, I know I would have regretted it. Reason being is you only get to be 18 once and as you get older, you are less likely to goof off, waste time, screw around. Going to JC and transferring would probably (for me at least) give me better grades, but school would have been just all business and I wouldn’t replace my own experience even with more financial success. There are no guarantees either way.
After I graduated and started working, I went back to visit a friend after being out of school for about 2 years and your view of life/college is already so different. I was so mindful of my time being wasted instead of just enjoying the experience.
In the dorms, there was always someone to chat/hang out with and waste time and have fun. You’ll be working for the next 50 years of your life so those young years of your life really does go by once. I was also in a single dorm room about 200 sqft with 2 other guys with community baths (not co-ed yet) on the floor…
Downside for me were those 2 years were probably horrible for my grades, but I would consider them some of the happiest times in my life being independent and responsibility free (no kids, mortgage, single, etc) and since I went away for college, having total freedom and grow up.
In terms of graduating in 4 years, that’s incredibly hard for engineering majors in the UC system due to full classes as well as half of the students in class failing and having to retake courses (at least back then and I’d assume it’s even worse now).
A lot of my upper division engr classes were curved and with the tests so hard, 50% of the class got a C- or lower so that means retake the course to graduate or switch majors (which a ton of people did during my time there).
You pretty much also have your whole class schedule made up in the back of the engr major guide so you didn’t have a lot of room to take something else if you couldn’t get in.
I agree that going to school in middle/high school with very driven/competitive students really helps you since I had a dorm-mate who studied in Hong Kong and he was an econ major, but had no trouble doing all my Physics homework since he did it all before at his high school. That would make college a ton easier. My high school is now rated a 5 in Greatschools so I’d probably do better in college if I did everything in HS already.
