Hatch a transfer strategy now.

Spending the first two years at a community college can be an economical way to earn a bachelor’s degree. Best case scenario is that you can transfer all your community college credits and enter as a junior pursuing a bachelor’s degree.

Pulling that off will take serious planning from the earliest days of starting at a community college. A 2017 General Accountability Office report estimated that among community college students who transferred to an in-state public four-year school, about 26% of credits were lost/ denied. That said, even when accounting for the extra cost of having to make up for those credits, families still saved money compared with having spent the entire four years at the in-state public school.

To reduce the risk of losing credits, identify the four-year public school your kid would like to end up at. Then dig into the website of that school to get the official details on credit transfers. Search for the “articulation agreement” list. Once you confirm a community college is on the list, also directly check with that school as well.

Then comes the harder part: What credits are transferable is going to be in part determined by the bachelor’s degree the student will be pursuing. At the point your kid has an inkling what the major might be, you want to connect with the four-year college that is the transfer target and get a rundown of specific credits/ classes needed to transfer in as a junior.