Community College for International Students: The Complete Truth

[Music] hey so this is William and today I wanted to talk about a very important topic when it comes to being an international student in America now if you don't know about me I am William I actually originally come from South Africa I moved to America in 2013 where I firstly went to Community College in Dallas Texas and then from there I transferred to the University of Rochester in Upstate New York and that's where I got my bachelor's degree and then I went on to getting my master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania now what I want to talk about today in particular is why you as an international student should go to community college now a lot of the times when I went to University of Rochester this is a four-year University right and I met with International students there I often ask them why didn't you go to Community College and overwhelmingly the answer was I just didn't know what it was so I actually want to give you guys some insight on what exactly Community College is and why you should attend Community College as an international student so in America there's different layers of education so you've got your primary school um that's what we call it in South Africa but here they'll call it elementary school then you have middle school and then you have high school and then you have colleges right higher education so the first thing to note over here is that colleges and universities in America pretty much mean the same thing now that's one point which often International students Miss they think that because one is a college and one is a university that they fundamentally different but no now there is a difference between community colleges and colleges and University I'm going to explain exactly what the difference is Community College is a 2year college and now at that means is that you can attend Community College and get a 2-year degree now that 2-year degree is called an associates degree and Community College is very similar to University and colleges in that it is done typically After High School so once you've completed high school then you go to Community College and then from there you're going to go to a four-year college or university so one thing that I want to note here the biggest difference between community colleges and universities in America is that community colleges are typically 2 years long and they give you an associates degree now what that means is once you get the 2-year associates degree you actually have a degree from America you actually graduated with a degree now what does that mean it means that you can technically do your op if you don't know what opt is I'm going to explain that in a different video but think of it as a way for you to be allowed to work in America so if you get your Associates degree you are allowed to work in America for up to one year but again I'll talk about opt in a different video so this is one big benefit of Community College it's the fact that once you graduate you actually are able to work in America for one year now what is another big Advantage you are going to transfer from your community college to a university or a fouryear college right I know I'm saying College a lot here but truly colleges and universities are one and the same thing at least a foure colleges and four year universities the only big difference is community colleges now going back to what I was saying now when it comes to community colleges in America once you get your two-year degree you are going to transfer to a fouryear school and by fouryear school I mean either four-year college or four-year University now when you transfer you actually are going to transfer with credit that's a big thing so if you got your associate's degree and it took you 2 years to get that associates degree if you got your associates degree you are typically going to transfer into a university University as a junior so what does that mean you are going to be transferring into a university as a thirdeye student meaning that you only have two years left before you get your bachelor's degree now this is Major because the thing about community colleges which makes them so great is the fact that there are typically oneth the price of private universities and colleges in America the one tenth the price and they typically also like half the price of public universities and colleges in America so they are relatively cheap now I'll give you an example in the college that I went to the Community College that I went to the tuition was about $2,800 per semester so that's the tuition for an international student studying in America at a community college now the price hasn't changed that much since the last time I saw it but basically it was still in that 2800 to 3,000 range now that is per semester so if you think about it per year you are only spending like $6,000 on your tuition per year now let's compare that with a university now if you look at the University's cost this is where you see the real real savings of going to Community College if for instance you look at UT Austin right UT Austin is a government school so it's a government University a public university and it charges about $6,000 per semester for instate tuition what that means is in order for you to qualify for instate tuition you need a scholarship then you'll be paying the instate tuition cost um but anyway the instate tuition cost is about $66,000 now that is per semester right so as you can see for two semesters you're going to be paying over $112,000 whereby at Community College you'll be paying about $6,000 so there you go half right now that is only if you get instate tuition what happens if you don't if you don't get instate tuition then you could be looking at something like 20 22,000 per semester so again the amount of money that you would spend in a year would be over $40,000 and when it comes to private schools it's not that much different if you go to a school like University of Pennsylvania or Harvard or something like that you'll be paying over $60,000 in tuition alone right um and that I mean in total tuition so about 30,000 per semester in tuition so now one other thing that students often missed out on is the fact that once you to Community College and you get great grades Etc and you get acclimated to the American educational system you will actually most likely get a scholarship in order to go to a four-year school so a lot of the times four-year schools compete for students who are transferring and one of the things that they do is they have transfer scholarships so this is one of the things that I got so when I transferred from Dallas College to the University of Rochester I actually got a transfer scholarship and that helped me tremendously when it came to tuition so having gone to Community College definitely helped me save a lot of money and also provide me with an opportunity to get a scholarship at a fouryear school and that's the big thing as an international student the reason why you want to go to Community College is because one once you get your associates degree you can work for a year legally in America uh two you will be saving money on tuition and then three you most most likely will be able to get a scholarship to go to your fouryear University or college so those are three really amazing reasons why you should go to Community College as an international student so if you like this type of video let me know comment down below with any questions that you have about being an international student in America and also definitely hit a thumbs up on this video like this video And subscribe so that I know this is the type of content that you want and it's also going to help the channel out tremendously so thank you so much for watch watching and I'm going to be seeing you in the next video