Would you say there are plenty of Harvard transfer acceptees with 3.9 GPAs (but not 4.0)? I lost my 4.0 this semester and I’m pretty crushed about it.
For what it’s worth, the class was incredibly hard. It started with 15 students and ended with 4 (myself included). I learned a lot and I’m glad I took the class, but I’m worried an A- will count me out as a transfer applicant.
An A- will not count you out. However, Harvard only accepts about 12 transfer students per year out of more than 1500 transfer applicants. And my guess is that about half of the transfer admits (6 students) are probably athletic recruits. So your actual chances of being an academic transfer admit are about one-half-of-one-percent. So you should realistically look upon the whole transfer process at Harvard as playing Mega-millions lottery. You can’t win it without being in it, but your odds of being accepted are so minimal you shouldn’t get all worked up over one A- .
@gibby Are you saying my chances are next-to-nil because of the A-, or are you saying my odds are just as bad with the A- as they would have been without it?
I’m saying your chances of being admitted are next-to-nil regardless of your GPA.
That’s understood. I’m not counting on getting in just because of my GPA, but I was worried a 3.9 would negatively impact my application. Is a 4.0 considered an unofficial ‘standard’? Or do plenty of students at competitive universities with strong applications manage to get in with 3.9x GPAs as well?
Successful transfer admits must demonstrate how studying at Harvard would give them an educational opportunity particular to their interests that could be experienced nowhere else. Very few students can actually do that, regardless of their GPA. So what does Harvard offer you that you can’t get at Stanford, Yale, MIT, Duke, UChicago or anywhere else?
^I’m not worried about that aspect of the application. I’ve thought about all of that and know I can make a strong case. I just need to know if a 3.95 would make my transcripts seem significantly weaker than someone else’s 4.0.
Bump?
@gibby has answered your questions thoroughly and accurately. If you’re bumping just to get another opinion on how much your A- will hurt your application, I suspect no one here really knows, but I’ll speculate for you: it’ll make the near impossible even more remote. You’ll never know until you try. Good luck!
Has anyone heard of 3.9 GPAs getting in via transfer anywhere on CC? It’s hard finding stats on transfer apps in specific.
Charlie: Gibby has told you that H accepts 10-12 ppl per year. What kind of stats would even be drawn from a pool such as this? Other top schools’ transfer accepts likely mirror this. There’s no trying to predict this. If you double your chances, you go from one percent to two percent likelihood. What can you derive from this? Stop analyzing this and just go forward.
It’s just hard to stay motivated if you feel like you’ve completely blown your chances, I suppose.
Then I’d say you’re being motivated by the wrong things. A Harvard degree shouldn’t be your goal – but your academica achievements – already attaing a near 4.0 is stupendous. I’d imagine you’re over-estimating what Harvard really is.
D9 Data points Harvard CDS: http://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2013-14.pdf
Beyond those numbers, Harvard doesn’t publish the GPA or ACT/SAT scores of transfer applicants.
How about being motivated by the pursuit of knowledge rather than grade grubbing?
^If I was more concerned about my GPA than I was about learning, I would have dropped the class like 90% of my classmates did. I don’t regret taking the class. I just realize GPA is important, too.
I doubt that an A- would be the deciding factor in application for transfer. It is far more likely that you would have been rejected whether you got an A or an A- for the course. Harvard admits for transfer those cases that represent exceptions. If a student’s circumstances are exceptional enough, then the decision to admit will likely not hinge on the difference between an A and an A-.
The only thing in this whole discussion that makes me think the OP has more than a 0% chance of getting a transfer admission to Harvard is the fact that he or she didn’t drop a class in which a straight “A” was probably not attainable because of the educational value of the class. So far, for me, that’s the best part of the story.