What is the difference in all respects to get into a top school between by transfer and freshman student? Thank you for your answer.
By “top school”, are you thinking “Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Chicago” level? I do understand that a few students do transfer into these schools. However, in five years at two of them, I never met anyone who admitted to getting accepted as a transfer student. They take very few transfers.
Of course Michigan, UC Berkeley, UCLA, McGill, Toronto, and so on are also very good schools. But the answer might be quite different for these schools. Transferring is is much more realistic at this level (particularly if you are in-state, or domestic for the Canadian schools).
I also wonder whether or not this thread might want to consider the option of getting your bachelor’s degree at a “top 100” or “top 200” university, and then attending a top 10 university for graduate school (whether a master’s or some form of doctorate). I know multiple people who have taken this approach, and I used to know a lot more.
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This might be helpful.
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Sorry I’m not quite following your question.
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Will it make any difference to one between a transfer and freshman student after they got accepted to a good school?
If you are in a good school, you better give a very good reason to transfer. Also I assume you had good high school stats. You need to keep your college GPA good then you can try a better school.
There is a huge difference between an entering freshman and a transfer student.
Freshman tend to get better scholarship and financial aid opportunities because the university is looking to attract strong entering students.
@Transfer20212025 is absolutely correct that you need to have a strong, legitimate reason for transferring.
Transfers may be able to get into some similar schools, but at the elite schools, many don’t have the spaces to offer to transfer students. The schools have to wait for a current student to drop or leave before offering the spot to a transfer. Assume a handful of student transfer spots per year (~5).
Before your child transfers, make sure you can afford the full fees at the new school. Transfers tend to get really limited aid.
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Looks like Emory’s acceptance rate is higher for transfers.
Emory, Vanderbilt, ND, Northwestern, Cornell, William & Mary and NYU for example, tend to have higher transfer acceptance rates than freshman. But the Ivies (sans) Cornell are either the same or lower for transfers vs freshman. It’s very school specific.
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Why transfer??
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As far as I know, UPenn and Columbia have a little lower acceptance rates, but they do accept over 100 transfers each year.
True but that’s out of anywhere from 2500-2900+ applications for UPenn. It’s atleast as competitive as freshman admissions and potentially more so.
Columbia doesn’t publish their transfer info to my knowledge. Plus they have GS in addition to CC and SEAS.
@compiler why does this kid want to transfer?
Is this the same kid you were talking about last year…in terms of transfer?
Why does this kid want to transfer? If it’s the same kid as last year, he is attending a top 30 college. Does this school not have his major of interest? Does he hate the culture there?
Or is he taking a higher ranked school for the prestige of a higher ranked school?
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Do your research. You can google the common data set for any college you are interested in and you will see/can calculate the freshman and transfer acceptance rates.
Note that merit aid is typically more difficult to get as a transfer student.
To answer your original question, there is no difference as far you are 100% a student at the transfer school, have all the opportunities available at that school and will graduate with a diploma from that school.
Areas that could be affected applying as a freshman vs transfer include financial aid, housing and difficulty in completing your major within 4 years.
Acceptance rate differences have already been discussed.
These schools don’t have higher rates for transfer.
There are fewer spots for transfer students. There may be 1600 spots for freshmen at elite schools (so maybe 800 males/800 females). The same schools may only have 10 transfer spots (5 male/5 female).
Transfer students don’t get as much aid. Schools like the Ivies only offer need based aid, so if your child needs merit make sure they apply to schools that offer it to transfers.
Students need an extremely good reason to transfer to elite schools. Targeting a college because they’re a “top” school isn’t going to translate into an acceptance. Your child has to have solid reasons for wanting to transfer to a particular school and the application has to reflect how s/he is a fit for the college.
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Warning: that thread is very old. Looking at threads here from this transfer season, you can see that Georgetown’s rate dropped from @ 8 to 9% to only 2.5%! I read that only 50 out of 2600 applicants to transfer were accepted.