You can watch YouTube videos and buy books from Amazon for cheap. To your question you can get rejected from community college. I had to finish my high school to be able to take business classes, but it was a technical Institute.

I would bet a high school diploma is sufficient.

Well..no. It’s not like Harvard or Yale. If you graduated from high school, you’re in.
And if your income is low enough you qualify for a Pell Grant. It only pays for your tuition and books but you have everything else, all living expenses, covered, right? And it’s a grant. You don’t have to pay it back.

And it is a great question.

Too late to edit.

Licensed Optician, not Optometrist.

If they have open enrollment which most community colleges have, you can’t be rejected. You may have to take placement tests to see if you need any remedial course work – which you won’t. You should be fine. Good on ya!

LOL! No, you definitely won’t need any remedial work, @Seek. You’re way too self educated and smart to need that.

You’re in. You just have to do.

You may have to take placement tests to see if you need any remedial course work – which you won’t.

I went to a university which rejects thousands each year. And yet kids in English 101 would ask if spelling counted and if they had to write in complete sentences on essays.

You’re miles ahead of them.

Miles and miles. Go for it.

I can’t imagine them rejecting you.

You could also explain, as you have here, that no one in your family ever encouraged you in any way to pursue higher education formally.

Let them know what you’ve pursued on your own as an independent learner.

Your story is not that unusual. There are lots of people who were never encouraged toward higher learning.

My family was the exact same (altho not for religious reasons; my stepfather was an asshole)

Fortunately, there was a guidance counselor who called me in, plunked my test scores down in front of me and challenged me to explain why I was in a non-Regents program.

I basically told him what my parents had told me. He then made sure that I knew when crucial tests were upcoming and shepherded me through choosing a college and qualifying for a Regents scholarship.

I literally owe that man my life as I know it today. He was really doing his job and then some.

Such a shame there was no one like that in your school. But it’s never too late to start and Community College is the perfect starting point.

Go for it. You deserve it.

You could invent a whole new specialty: “Optimystery”

What the hell is that thing in your eye, dude?

The beauty of community college is that anyone can go.

Good on you for opening up the world of possibilities for yourself.

My old girlfriend dropped out of high school when she was fifteen. She worked various jobs for a long time, but had always heard school was not for her. When she was in her late twenties, she had moved to Santa Cruz to be near her mom, and was working as a janitor in the dorms at the University of California Santa Cruz.

After a year of cleaning up after eighteen year olds that were at University, she got up the courage to go enroll at a Community College. She got her GED and after three years, transferred to a University, where she got her Bachelor’s degree. And then she went to graduate school and got a Doctorate in Psychology.

It was a long haul for her, who had been told school was not for her, but she did it and you can too!

The application process is a formality, so they know something about you and
have a record of who you are. Also, for the sake of statistics, they want to know where their students live and something more about them.

You’re in. You’ll be fine. Great choice of a career!

If they reject you, they don’t deserve you. I think you are suffering from imposter syndrome. If you want this, go for it. You can definitely do it and you deserve to be able to do it if you want it.

I don’t know how your education system works, but here, you would be able to sit an exam to test your maths and English to see if you can get entry. I’d imagine that’s the worst that could happen. That they’d ask you to sit an entry test. Good luck with it.

Don’t back out. Even if you decide this degree isn’t right for you, go anyway. You can always change degrees. I changed my mind three times before I finally found my path.

Unless things have drastically changed since 2000 you should be fine.

I dropped out of high school in 1995 during my junior year of high school and got a job. Then in 2000 I did this adult high school thing at the Community College to get my diploma. I was working 60 hours a week while taking classes and my grades reflected that. I did just enough to graduate.

But totally no problem getting into the community college for real college classes.

Once you get accepted (I am 99% sure you will) they will have you do a orientation where they show you how to register for classes and so on.

Then you will have to do placement tests for math and writing. Do not worry. Even if you bomb the math test they will have a class for you to take. Seriously.. Math 20, they teach addition and subtraction.

You will do fine on the writing part.

EDIT :: And get on the FAFSA ASAP. The federal government will help pay for a lot and it is super simple. For some perspective when I did my first two years of CC I only walked away with around 4K in loan debt. Grants covered the rest. And they paid tuition, books, and around 900 a month for living expenses.

Okay, joking aside, surely you have enough self-awareness to realize that you are already more intelligent than even most of the professors that you’ll encounter at most CCs. Which is not to say “smarter”, because the hardest part to getting smarter is… unlearning the things that you think you know, but which just aren’t so. We all have that problem, and i do not exempt myself, either.

But it’s not possible to say “you can’t possibly be rejected for admission to CC”, because who knows the reasons why such a thing might occur? There may very well be capacity restraints and preferences ahead of you that could cause a rejection for some particular reason. But I tend to doubt that. So, assume you’ll be accepted. If there’s any question, then blow them away with an essay, which you can do in your sleep. I could pretty much guarantee that any professor who can see that this one can write! complete sentences! with most of the words spelled correctly! [okay, maybe I’m being overly optometrist there, but still… most of ‘em] And she makes arguments which, while I may not agree with them, obviously demonstrate a mastery of logical reasoning and presentation!… will want you in his (or her) own class, and will compete for your attendance.

Yeah, you’ll gain acceptance. No doubt.

@CWOTUS – Haha, I may or may not have had a beer or three when I posted this question. The program is with the “School of Opticianry” which struck me as not-really-a-word, I think, and didn’t sit in my head. Thus the confusion.

“School of Opticianry”, for reals? – in their catalog, or in your beer-addled brain? Maybe you should sell them editing / proofreading services and make your hygher eddication a paying proposition from the day you start.

Apparently it was established in 1973, and was only the second in the country at the time.

Either way, learning how to design and build eyeglasses is a pretty cool 2-year degree, whatever they call it.

Hell I debated dropping out of high school just to go to cc early. I think you should not have any worries. While you are there consider doing the smart thing: most aas programs require math english etc.. but not all of those will transfer to a university. You can usually substitute the math, science and english classes that do transfer for the classes required for your aas. When you decide to keep going you won’t find yourself retaking stuff.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

Just got an acceptance email.

Now I have a daunting amount of paperwork ahead of me for financial aid, I think. Thoughts, prayers, and sweet-smelling burnt sacrifices to Morgoth accepted.

I am so glad you are taking this step! If you need any advice, pm me.

I HATE PAPERWORK.

Seriously. There is literally no way to know whether it’s better or worse to put Ian as a member of my household because no one will define exactly what “providing more than half support” means.

@Seek If you claim an exemption for Ian on your Federal taxes, you get to also claim him for student aid. The FAFSA will cross reference to your filed taxes.

Good luck, smile as you take scary steps forward, be brave and know you have people cheering for you!

LOL!!! Oh, I know about paperwork! Just sit down and do it!

FAFSA is applying for student loans which have to be paid back…..I don’t see any reason she couldn’t make it on Pell grants, which you don’t pay back.

Student loans are a monster. I only incurred $10,000 in loans, and that because my ex husband quit supporting us (the kids) in any way and I had a mortgage to pay. I graduated in 1993, and I STILL haven’t paid it all back.

Pell grant paid for all my tuition and books.

Call the financial office for some help.

Financial office said “Fill out the FAFSA and we’ll call you when we get it in” and then hung up.

They want tax information and numbers and I still haven’t figured out last year because Hubby was in and out of work and the numbers don’t make sense so our return is late already.

One panic attack for the day is enough. I’m finally processing oxygen again, and I’m going to talk to Hubby after he gets off work and mess with it later.

It’s all good, @Seek. I can’t believe they were so abrupt with you.

It was clearly a student on the phone. I’m not about to try to figure out the magic word to get past the 18 year old receptionist’s script and talk to a person who knows something, especially when I’m already up to my elbows in confusion at trying to navigate a college website straight out of 1998.

No one take web design courses from HCC, that’s all I’m saying.

You’ll figure it all out. I know you will.

@Seek: What will help is if you get the name of a nice person in the office, so you can bypass the rude ones and the kids who think they’re in authority.

No doubt that now you’ve been accepted you’ll sort out all their incompetencies with your superior skills and brains. There will be a lot of people with lesser brains than yours there; you’ll have to get used to it if you want to make it through.

Maybe you could get a job as an office manager there!

Hail no. Rather be boiled in oil than do admin work again.