<p>Hey guys!</p>
<p>I'm a freshman at the University of Central Florida, and I plan to transfer to a top research university as a junior, though I wouldn't mind going to a top liberal arts college. My question is, can anyone give me some insight regarding which are some of the best undergrad economics programs that would work out for a transfer student? Also, I already have a list of schools that I am considering, so if you know anything about them please share. My list goes as follows:</p>
<p>U Penn
Northwestern
Vanderbilt
USC
Notre Dame
Emory
UF(safety school)</p>
<p>Also, as far as extracurriculars, I am doing a bunch of volunteer work dealing with homelessness and hunger, and am planning on going on a trip to Dominican Republic to build houses and help Haitian refugees. I will hopefully be a justice in the judicial branch of my school's SGA. Also, I'm in a leadership program on campus called LEAD Scholars, which is reasonably selective, and I will be a part of it's admissions team this spring. In addition to the program I am getting a leadership certificate. My classes are fairly easy, so estimate that I will have around a 3.9 GPA by the time I transfer. My ACT is 29, but I'm sure I can get it up if I need to, since I din't study for it and only took it once, same with SAT, only that I took that one twice and got a 2030. </p>
<p>Given this (mostly hypothetical) profile, what are my chances of getting into a top 12-25 research school? And also, what other schools should I look more into?</p>
<p>Transferring chances can be individual to each school and to each school year. If a school had a larger than expected enrollment one year, their transfer rates for that class will be tiny to non-existent, esp. at the best schools. Students don’t leave schools in their freshman years at the schools you’ve listed, and not many will have left by end of sophomore year. So there’s no chancing you, given these schools.</p>
<p>Your GPA is excellent, and I love your ECs, but the standardized test scores are meh for any of these but maybe USC. The LACs have fewer students and so, generally, fewer transfer openings. There are many state schools that are strong in economics and to which you’ll have an easier time transferring: Stony Brook, UMN-TC, Boulder, Madison, UI-C, UDub, Indiana, Purdue, OSU, and your own FSU. </p>
<p>Transfer admissions tends to be much less well documented than frosh admissions, and many more selective schools admit few (or no) transfer students).</p>
<p>For economics, is your goal more pre-PhD or pre-professional? You may want to check the course offerings at each school to determine suitability (mathematical economics and good math and statistics offerings for pre-PhD, economics applied to business problems for pre-professional).</p>
<p>USC takes a ton of transfers. Vandy, ND, and Emory may not be that hard to transfer in to either. Not sure they care all that much about test scores for transfers, frankly. Some of these schools care about test scores of applicants coming out of HS for rankings purposes, but transfers’ test scores do not factor in to rankings at all. Your college GPA would matter most.</p>
<p>You should also consider UMich & UVa.</p>
<p>I know that it’s actually easier to transfer in to UNC than to get in right out of HS if you’re OOS.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot guys! ucbalumnus, I’m going more for the pre-professional track, thanks for making that point, I will certainly look into it. PurpleTitan: I’ll look into UMich and UVa as well. </p>
<p>If pre-professional, consider UNC as well. Certainly, the top 2 schools make sense in that case.</p>
<p>
By this I take it to mean you’re looking for a job in the business area, not as an economist (which would require a PhD, even if employed in industry). Then the rep of the Econ dept itself is almost irrelevant. You’re going to be looking for a job as someone with a liberal-arts degree; whether it is History or Econ or something else doesn’t make that big of a difference because Econ classes are not directly applicable to business. It will be helpful to you to take more math and programming classes than required, and to look at the on-campus recruiting program since that both gives an indication of what industry things of the grads from the college and provides a smoother path to landing a position. Internship programs are also going to be key for you to stand out as a job applicant. </p>
<p>@mikemac:</p>
<p>Agree that overall rep of the school would matter more than the rep of the econ dept if looking for a job after undergrad, but disagree that all employers would treat econ majors and history majors equally. Many people expect econ majors to have a background of an amount of quantitative rigor which they don’t expect all history majors to have.</p>
<p>mikemac, I will definitely take that into consideration! I had not thought of that at all. thanks a lot for your insight. PurpleTitan, your posts have also been very useful! I’m definitely looking into the schools you mentioned.</p>
Chuckled as I re-read this thread. Thanks for your help! I Went back and retook the SAT, got a 2180 and got into Northwestern and Vandy, going to Vandy.
You can see transfer acceptance rates in the schools’ Common Data Sets.
Woops - old thread but congrats on Vandy
@wayneandgarth Thank you and thank you! I didn’t have access to that info, so it helps, if just for personal purposes.