<prompt> Human: Im an 18 year old senior in High School in Wisconsin. I currently have semi-decent grades 3.44 GPA 26 ACT and can get into surrounding colleges looking at information systems management but the problem is, I see many posts and hear many stories about significant debt and that scares me. I want to prevent myself as much as possible from having to pay it off for a long time to come. The colleges around here are 18-20k a year, and are pretty decent sized, any where from 5,000 to 10,000 students. I am also looking at a small community college in town here that is about 6k a year, although it does not have dorms. Im not sure the value of the dorms, as any of these aforementioned colleges are not the one I want to attend, so I will most likely only spend a year and transfer to my dream school. Do I spend the year at the larger school, is the freshman experience worth it? Or am I better off living at home and doing a 2 year transfer program into my dream college?  <response>: If your end goal is to transfer to another school I would say go to the cheaper community college first. There you can get some of your core classes out of the while saving money. Core classes should transfer to the other schools just fine. You should talk to each schools financial aid department including the comm college to see if there is any way to bring down the cost. 