Non-target Undergrad V.S CC to Target Undergrad

Hello everyone,
Hope you are all staying safe amidst the Corona Virus breakout.

Background
I'm looking for advice regarding my path to working in finance, specifically at a Hedge Fund. As of now I am trying to decide on whether I should go to school at UC Riverside or go to a CC for two years and transfer to a target school such as UCB or UCLA. I understand that this transfer is difficult and will require me to have an extremely strong GPA throughout my two years in CC, but I am sure that I can manage to do this. I am leaning towards transfering to a target school after two years as this will look the best on my resume, although I am hesitant as this means I will be missing out on two years of the 'college experience' as well as this not being a guarenteed path to a target school. During CC I assume that it will also be harder to gain connections, and this is something that, from what I've read, is almost crucial to breaking into the finance world. My fear in going to UCR lies in the fact that when trying to land a job after I graduate, they will dismiss my resume as UCR is a non-target school. From the research that I have done, going to a target school is an extremely large factor when trying to land a job, although I have also read a decent amount on people landing great jobs at Hedge Funds with internships, connections, and other experience.
**Question **
So my question here is whether the limited networking at community college for the first two years of my undergrad is worth going having a chance at going to a target school or if I should take the opportunity and go to UCR and build myself from there through experience and networking.

Thank you for your spending your time in reading this and helping me choose how to best achieve my goals.

 

Californian as well. I am in the second boat right now. Waiting to hear back from Haas and Irvine-PM, which are the only targets I applied to. I haven't slept in f-cking weeks!

Heres what I did, I think it's decently finessed:

Went to a Semi-Target (Above Davis, Below Irvine) for one year, got all the networking connections (eg: Professor Contacts, Networking w Alumni, School Clubs, Modeling Coursework) while keeping a 3.9 GPA, which wasn't easy at all for the school. Then I went down the street to (a very famous) CC where I loaded up on nearly twice as many units for a couple hundred bucks while still enjoying the benefits of the 4-Year I went to. CC's have insane grade inflation and keeping a 4.0 there as opposed to a UC will be a total walk in the park.

Do both. Worked insanely well for me. Let me know any questions you may have.

 

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