Community colleges are an excellent choice for those looking to get a quality education with minimal costs. Go to a community college for 2 years, complete the

Community colleges are an excellent choice for those looking to get a quality education with minimal costs. Go to a community college for 2 years, complete the necessary course prerequisites for whatever major you want to pursue and then transfer to a state college to finish your Bachelor's and take the hardcore courses. Many community colleges also have special or honors programs that impose some requirements on the students (such as a minimum course load of 12 credits/semester) but provide dedicated advising (some of you might not understand how important this is, but advisers can make or break your career path at some points, specially in community colleges) and also tuition waivers. I followed a very similar path to McGee's: went to a very large urban community college and got accepted to their honors program. I completed my first two years completely debt free, while getting a top notch education in the classes that I cared about (sciences mostly) and then transferred to a state university which is in the top 15 nationwide for my major. In all I saved around $30k for those two years. One of the downsides is that the quality of the education in community colleges varies wildly from one professor to another. I solved this by carefully selecting my professors and actively seeking the good ones. I found that attending a community college was in no way detrimental to my education when I compare myself with other students who went straight to the university after HS.