What kind of cutthroat high school/major did you choose if college is easier lol?
The thing about the CC to transfer route, something I'm doing right now, is that your decision of going straight to a university vs. CC to transfer should be heavily dependent upon whether you want to do research/take advantage of things a research university has over a CC. If you're pretty sure you want to get into research, UC as a frosh is a better route, since graduate school is heavily dependent on the amount/quality of research you do and more often than not, you'll lose at least 2+ possible years of research. So yeah you'll probably save money going to a CC, but going to a UC earlier could make your applications to grad school look better, so it's a tradeoff. Although some CC's actually do have very limited research opportunities on their campuses, like mine is researching water bears or something. Of course, you actually have to pursue getting into research once you're at the UC.
That said you could also transfer to a "better" UC from a CC if your high school performance isn't as up to par, CC's have this pretty great program called TAG where you basically just need to get ~3.2-3.5 GPA and you get a "transfer admission guarantee" to one of the UC's not named UC Berkeley, UCLA, or UCSD (UCSD just ended their TAG program a year or two ago). Also, if you're a little unsure of what to major in, don't have many AP credits and/or have some remedial classes you need to take, want to take an extra year of taking different subjects before deciding on a major, don't really plan on doing research, don't care to interact/work with people high up in your chosen field, or want to save money (which may be more relevant since you're coming all the way from singapore) CC to transfer is good.
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