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Ridgecrest, California
Thinking about Cerro Coso Community College, a college in California where more students graduate in Liberal Arts than anything else? The four things worth knowing are what it actually costs after aid, whether you would get in, whether students finish, and what they earn after they do.
Cerro Coso Community College is a public institution offering associate degrees based in Ridgecrest, California. It enrolls 3,171 students (a mid-sized student body), according to IPEDS 2023-24 data. Every figure on this page is reported by the federal government, not supplied by the college, so it can be compared like for like against anywhere else you are looking.
Official website: cerrocoso.edu
These four scores answer one question: compared with similar colleges, is this one worth the money? Each runs 0 to 100 and is judged only against its peer group (2-Year), so a community college is never marked down for not being Harvard. Everything is computed from federal data. Nobody can pay to move a score, and a pillar with missing data is left unscored rather than guessed.
As a two-year college, Cerro Coso Community College admits essentially everyone who qualifies, so plan around cost and completion instead of your odds of getting in.
Ignore the sticker price. What matters is the net price, which is what a typical family pays here after grants and scholarships come off. At $18,306 a year on average, it sits below what public colleges charge nationally. That still leaves most families a gap to cover, but a manageable one. Figures are College Scorecard 2023-24.
The average hides a wide spread by household income, so it is worth estimating what a family at your income would actually pay before treating this as the price.
Published cost of attendance, the sticker price before grants and scholarships. Most students underestimate room & board and other expenses.
Aid is need-based, so net price varies by family income. Here's what each bracket typically pays after grants and scholarships.
Cumulative federal-loan debt across the full borrowing distribution. The 10th and 90th percentiles bracket the typical range; the median sits in the middle.
Median federal-loan debt at graduation broken down by demographic. Each slice's size is proportional to the dollar amount that group typically borrows.
41% come back after first year. A sizeable share do not return for year two. Worth asking why. Source: IPEDS 2023-24.
Completion and earnings carry the most weight in this college's score, and how the UCD Score weighs each measure sets out exactly how they are combined.
Ten years after starting here, the median student earns $34,963 a year, below the national median. Weigh that against the cost above before taking on debt here. Source: College Scorecard 2023-24.
Median annual earnings 6, 8, and 10 years after students first enrolled.
Mean annual earnings 10 years after entry, segmented by demographic. Reveals gaps the headline median can't show.
Median earnings for female grads ten years after first enrolling here.
Median earnings for male grads ten years after first enrolling here.
Who you would actually be sitting next to: 3,171 students, a mid-sized community. Worth knowing: 51% are the first in their family to go to college, and 79% study part-time, so many are working alongside classes.
Undergraduate student body composition reported to the US Department of Education.
Where students live, learn, and connect at Cerro Coso Community College. The campus setting, housing profile, and signals that shape day-to-day life here.
After that comes the national picture for Health graduates, which shows what the field pays across every college rather than just this one.
Cerro Coso Community College offers a varied set of programs: 38 distinct programs across 18 majors. Below are its strongest majors, each with flagship programs and typical earnings. Open a major to explore it in depth, or browse the full program catalog.
There are 25 students for every instructor here: high, so expect big lectures and to work harder for one-to-one time.
65 instructional faculty across 1 ranks. The rank mix shows how many senior faculty are teaching versus contingent or junior staff, with average salary equated to a 9-month contract.
| Rank | Faculty Count | Share | Avg Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instructors | 65 | 100% | $106,771 |
No college is right for everyone. Here is where Cerro Coso Community College is likely to suit you and where it may not, based on the same figures shown above.
Read against a single profile these cut both ways, which is why it helps to put two colleges side by side on the same measures rather than judging one in isolation.
The questions families ask most about Cerro Coso Community College, answered straight from the federal data rather than from the college's own marketing.
One federal dataset, 3,811 colleges. The median school costs $16,296 a year, admits 78% of applicants, and enrolls 1,280 students. The shape of US higher ed.
Across 1,645 four-year colleges, graduation rates climb steadily with selectivity, from 54% at open-admission schools to 93% at the most exclusive. The gap is real.
For-profit colleges post the highest median net price of any sector and the lowest graduate earnings. They cost more than private nonprofits and pay less than publics.
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