Hello all, I am a freshman at a top 40 university in the US. I will be applying to Harvard for sophomore admission and would like to know if you think I have a decent chance and would welcome any advice.
Stats:
SAT:2300
HS GPA: 4.0
College GPA 4.0
EC’s:
Research- Been pretty involved (10-12 hours a week) at an engineering lab on campus, will be taking over on the project next semester. Lab head will write LOR
Student Government- Work on academic policy at weekly meetings
Dorm Representative- I was elected to be a representative for my dorm building on the “hall council,” we have weekly meetings and plan activities for the residents. It’s a lot of fun!
Most recent released data is they accepted 13 of over 1400 applicants. Your chances are zero if you were rejected as a freshman applicant, and very low overall.
You sound like you’re thriving at a top 40 school, not like you need to transfer.
The chances of an average applicant are actually much lower than the <1% indicated by those numbers. Some successful transfer applicants are athletic recruits. For example, a few years ago Harvard accepted as a transfer a well regarded quarterback who had been recruited to Harvard as a freshman, had transferred to LSU on a football scholarship after doing a two-year Mormon mission, and then transferred back to Harvard after he lost his starting job at LSU due to an injury. Other transfers (at least in the past) tended to be people who had been accepted at Harvard as freshmen but went elsewhere – sometimes to Deep Springs (a very interesting and highly regarded two-year program in the California high desert), and sometimes to a peer college or a military academy, but for some reason things didn’t work out. The number of accepted transfers who are not in those categories doesn’t usually make it into double digits.
It probably has happened sometime in the past 20 years, but I have never heard of someone who applied to Harvard out of high school and was rejected being accepted as a transfer.
In addition to all that, Harvard apparently miscalculated its likely yield, and overadmitted applicants to the class of 2021. Unless a much higher than usual number of students take leaves next year, that will probably result in sharply reducing the number of transfers Harvard can accept for next fall.
So, yeah. The average applicant’s chance is essentially 0%. Go ahead and apply if you want, and if you have a really good reason why you must be at Harvard to meet some academic need that your current institution cannot meet. But don’t get too wrapped up in it emotionally. Your energy would be better spent doing what you seem to be doing – getting the most out of the college you attend.