Does it matter where you received your associates degree from?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Say a person went to a below average college for two years and got their associates their and then transferred to an ivy league school. How would this person compare to someone else who spent all four years in the ivy league school? Does the first two years really make a difference when you apply for a job or a graduate school?

2

If you go on to get a bachelor’s degree, no one will care where you got your AA degree. Only the bachelor’s will count when you look for work or a grad school. However, all your grades from your years as an undergraduate will probably be counted when your GPA is calculated. Note that, upon graduation, your diploma will look absolutely the same regardless of where you spent those first two years of college.

3

I have a buddy who started at Community College, transfered to a four year program, and then got into an MD/PhD program (and now holds both). I wouldn’t say this is the norm, but it is definitely possible to do.

4

What if you have two people with the exact same resume except that one of them went to a city college for two years, but they both ended up graduating from an ivy league school? Would a company or graduate choose the person who went to an Ivy league school for 4 years straight or would they go with the interview or some other method?

5

Most people with bachelor’s degrees tend to leave off their community-college coursework, because that’s incorporated into the bachelor’s degree. It’s not the associate’s degree that matters, it’s the bachelor’s. In other words, there is no difference. The only people I know who have listed community-college work were those who had specialized coursework that would make them more valuable to an employer. For an example, I worked with a woman who got her bachelor’s degree in accounting, but who listed her medical-billing training to make her more valuable to medical employers. Otherwise, most people don’t bother.

That said, four-year universities tend not to use coursework transferred in to calculate the student’s GPA at that institution. For example, I transferred 15 courses. The previous coursework counts towards total credits and the academic requirements for graduation, but the grades do not transfer. So the 3.56 GPA I got in technical college doesn’t count. The 3.78 GPA I’ve earned while at my university does.

Robin