Brief advice for transfer applicants to top schools

<p>A few people have asked me about my transfer application. I'll post advice here.</p>

<p>Your explanation of your academic need will be the most important part of the application. "Dig deep": write about why you're interested in your fields of interest and what you want to do with them.</p>

<p>If you don't have an academic reason to transfer, try to frame your reasons such that they are germane to your academic performance. (Example: Your school's lackluster social scene saps your motivation, or you are homesick, so you don't do as well in class as you should...) I don't think that the applicant's reasons for wanting the school are as important as her reasons why the school should want her. </p>

<ol>
<li>Get the best grades you can. The average GPA of accepted Yale transfers is 3.8, and its peer schools are hardly more lenient.</li>
<li>You should detail your plans for the rest of your college career in the "Why transfer?" essay. Write about how your college experience has led you to realize that the schools you are applying to are better fits. Don't badmouth your school: try to be evenhanded, fair and honest. Be specific about your academic, social, and professional goals. If you would like to write a senior thesis, think of a question you want to answer. If you're applying only to one school, you can write about some of its programs, professors, and course offerings.</li>
<li>Try to show a "theme" or "commonality" in your extracurriculars. I'm an English major, so most of my ECs had to do with literature, reading, writing, journalism. Your ECs might not be the same as your academic interests, but they should not seem scattershot.</li>
<li>Your essays should complement each other and the rest of your application. Don't rehash material, but keep the theme of your extracurriculars in mind. To use a cliché: "give the admissions committees a lucid glimpse into an aspect of your character." I answered each question differently, but all of my answers reflected my interests in reading and writing. I doubt that any other applicant wrote essays similar to mine.</li>
</ol>

<p>Spending time on College Confidential is stressful, but it might be useful too. While I was scavenging for threads about transferring, I found half-a-dozen helpful ones and one that I can give almost all of the credit for my success. Keep your eyes open.</p>

<p>In a word: be yourself, and be unique (within the bounds of tolerance and civil discourse). You do not want to look like any other applicant.</p>

<p>P.S. Consider changing your “Why transfer?” essay for each school. I did not do so: I wrote my essay for Yale, though I took care not to mention individual professors, and sent it to all of the schools to which I applied. Furthermore, take the time to write, rewrite, and edit each essay. My submissions for Stanford and UChicago, whose supplements did not have “Why Us?” prompts, were unspecific and lackluster, which might have been their reason for wait-listing me. </p>

<p>Hi CeaselessPlan, </p>

<p>Thanks for posting; I definitely appreciate the advice. Any chance you could link to some of the helpful threads you found, particularly the ones you give almost all of the credit for your success?</p>

<p>I assume that the advice above is most likely a summary of what you learned from them, but it’s helpful to read the primary source of information as well.</p>

<p>Thanks,
panceparty</p>

<p>I did not link to any of those threads because I want to be fair to those who, like me, scour these boards for advice. If I were to post links, quite a few aspiring transfers would follow the same advice, and transfer admissions would become even more unpredictable. My posts are meant to guide applicants – I don’t want to give them all of the answers.</p>

<p>At any rate, the threads are easy to find. </p>

<p>LOL I think I have read at least 500 transfer threads on this site and I’m still not sure that I’ve found the articles you speak of. At any rate, you’re still a helpful dude. Hope all goes well for everyone in the 2014/2015 cycle (perhaps mostly myself :P). </p>

<p>thank you for sharing!!</p>

<p>The commonapp actually only allows you to change your common app essay, the “why transfer?” essay, three times. So you won’t be able to actually tailor it to each individual school.</p>

<p><a href=“https://appsupport.commonapp.org/link/portal/33011/33013/Article/1513/Updating-the-Essay”>https://appsupport.commonapp.org/link/portal/33011/33013/Article/1513/Updating-the-Essay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

This is a major necropost, but I’m doing it because I just went through the process of transferring and spent a lot of time looking up resources like this. Every little tip was useful, so I’ll contribute my two cents by saying this advice is, at least in my experience, spot on. I didn’t see this particular thread while I was applying, but I did things very similarly and got into my top choices. There are of course lots of other considerations, but this advice is covers a lot. It was very difficult for me to write an essay highlighting why I needed a different environment without resorting to trashing my previous institution, as the line between those two things can be very blurry. But it is definitely worth taking the time to make sure there’s no badmouthing, since I really feel like that can look petty. (I am not saying that it actually is petty! I had a lot of very serious and legitimate grievances with the school I’m leaving, and I really wanted to slip some of that in there, but I realized it made for a much stronger essay if I addressed the grievances very indirectly by talking about how I could better move forward at a different school.)

My only other piece of advice is to make the most of supplementary essays, especially if the topic is a more “creative” one.