Music Talk Board

Are you doing the thing where you attend your first two years at community college, then transfer to a university for the last two? First two years are mostly your gen ed classes anyway, so why not spend less money on then?

My parents paid for me for my three years of college, except my first two years were in public schools, ergo, cheap. My first year in music college (a private school), this year, my parents also paid for the tuition, but I have to work to pay them back because they are running low on money.

This summer I'm going to be playing gigs with a jazz band my childhood friend started (he's a double-bass player). In fact, I'm working on a chart for Summertime right now. Hopefully I'll make a few paying gigs.

@carl:
I did the same thing, actually. I went to community college and then a state university. If you get an associate's degree in "General Studies", 95% of your credits will transfer over to the state university. Plus, you'd already have a 2 year degree, and that sounds good to people.

Okay I'm curious as to how uni payment works over there. Do you pay outright, or do you pay it as a loan? Here, we get a loan from the government which covers the course cost and is payed back when you start earning > £21000 (i think, IDK, I'm hazy on the exact numbers) per year, and it gets wiped of you can't pay it after 30 years. These last two things are recent, since the tuition fees rose, as before it was essentially a standard loan.

Well, if you pay for yourself (or your parents pay for it), then you have to pay like 33% 2 weeks into the semester. Then, after that, you have to pay another 33% a bit further into the semester and the final 33% before the end. (The percentage may vary, depending on the school; but you usually have to pay a large percentage in the first 2 weeks. If you haven't paid the right amount by then, they basically tell you to gtfo.) Of course, if you have the funds, you can just pay it all at the beginning.

If you get a student loan or other financial aid, then you have basically tell the school all the info on that and the school gets it in the first 4 weeks. I applied for and received a grant (which is basically a loan that you never pay back, lol) my last 2 semesters, because it was getting hard on my parents financially.
Loans, of course, you pay back. There's loans from banks, from the government, and from credit unions. (Those all work differently, depending on the terms of the loan and the institution you received it from.) Grants or scholarships you don't pay back, but you often have to fit some criteria. (I received my grants because I was a Wisconsin resident. lol) And you have to apply for a grant or scholarships early, because it's often first come first served.

(06-06-2014, 04:35 PM)Mr Maps Wrote: [ -> ]Okay I'm curious as to how uni payment works over there. Do you pay outright, or do you pay it as a loan? Here, we get a loan from the government which covers the course cost and is payed back when you start earning > £21000 (i think, IDK, I'm hazy on the exact numbers) per year, and it gets wiped of you can't pay it after 30 years. These last two things are recent, since the tuition fees rose, as before it was essentially a standard loan.

Mine is almost all scholarships or loans and my parents pay the remain 2-3 grand. The loans aren't too bad. It comes out to about $50 a month once I'm done school. Over a lot of months though :p

Riiiight. Cool. Here I don't think you get grants for your course fees, but you pay back the funding (to the public sector) in your own time, as and when you can.

(06-06-2014, 12:34 PM)Grungie Wrote: [ -> ]Are you doing the thing where you attend your first two years at community college, then transfer to a university for the last two? First two years are mostly your gen ed classes anyway, so why not spend less money on then?

Yes, this is what I'm doing. The classes line up perfectly for the degrees I'm interested in, I just have less interesting variety in certain areas (they are more generalised, obviously).

The problem is, I only ever applied for the university, so if I fill out a community college application in June (lol), by the time I get around to all that I'm afraid classes might be filled up.

Regarding payments: Tuition at the university is $11,000 per year compared to $2,000 per year at the community college. I made a budget using a variety of income estimates, and with my low estimate, I could only pay $1,000 of tuition (along with the other costs) while my parents would have to pay the rest. I already have enough to pay for a semester of community college. It's much more simple. Doesn't sound like it's worth the upgrade, it's just stupid that I'm just now finalising my decision (though to be fair it took me a while to convince them).

I did the community college thing first too. Made sense to me since I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and all the core classes are the same for most majors. Plus, waaaaay cheaper

(06-07-2014, 01:59 AM)WCPhils Wrote: [ -> ]I did the community college thing first too. Made sense to me since I wasn't sure what I wanted to do and all the core classes are the same for most majors. Plus, waaaaay cheaper

I agree. Well, I pretty much know what I want to do, but it's not 'lucrative' enough to justify $44,000 in expenses, especially when it's more of a back-up plan, not what I actually want.

I can sign up for a transfer program specifically for the university (they are both based in the same city so it makes sense). I'd still carry a university card and have access to all of their facilities and such, and it's pretty much guaranteed that my credits will transfer. Pretty good deal if you ask me.

Do you think I will be able to get the right classes though? First, I still have to apply (>_>), so I'd have to get my high school to send in my transcript (they'd probably go 'wtf' after they already sent it to the university months ago lol). Then I have to take the entrance exams and attend the orientation. They have orientations lined up all the way into August (which you must attend before you can register for classes), and most classes still have 20-40 spots (it's a community college so obviously the classes are smaller), so I'm not too worried. It will probably be weeks before I can register for them though, that's my fear. That's the only reason I'd still go straight to university, or if the community college didn't have a class(es) that I absolutely must take for my degree.

genghis (from UG) was trying to get me to apply to Chavland universities late (which means I'd be accepted around this time). I can only wonder how stressful that would have been lol.

Edit: Wasn't even trying to imply that something this simple is stressful. The two scenarios aren't very comparable; don't know why I threw in that last part. :p