After moving to California six years ago, I was surprised to learn how many high school students have this plan -- a couple of years at a local community college and a transfer to one of the bigger Cal schools.
It's a good strategy for many. My community college let me take basic calc based physics with a small class of 20 pre-engineering majors. After transferring to a big engineering school I met my wife. She took the exact same class but it now had 400 people and zero time with the professor. Also now it didn't use calculus.