Sorry again, but the numbers do not lie and tell you all you need to know–period. This is not personal to you, but rather what applies to every potential candidate. See–http://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/stats/transfer-acceptance-rates/#.VUU3FNq9KSM
These numbers are from several years ago–in more recent years, the numbers have been even lower. And, yes the admissions office was being very cordial to you.
Well I guess that’s it then. Wouldn’t that mean my chances at any fairly selective school are none then?
“Well I guess that’s it then. Wouldn’t that mean my chances at any fairly selective school are none then?”
It depends on what you mean by “fairly selective.” If you’re talking about the Ivies, yeah, that’s mostly right - chances are very low. Transfers are for exceptional cases (except Cornell, which has a special program that you’d need to qualify before entering your freshman year). You really haven’t shown why yours would be an exceptional case.
But there are other selective schools that more readily take transfers. I mentioned state flagships. Many of them are very good schools.
In looking at a list of transfer rates of top 50 universities, i can see that there are private schools - very good schools - that take a lot more than one or two or a few percent transfers. Here are a few. These numbers are from 2012, so they’re likely lower, now, but it’ll give you an idea.:
Notre Dame: 37%; Vanderbilt: 26%; Emory: 32%. University of Virginia: 37%; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: 42%.
Obviously, you need to be academically-qualified for schools like these! They’re great schools! They’re tough to get into! But you seem confident that with your health issues resolved, that you can now demonstrate your academic excellence. If you succeed in that, then there are good schools into which you can transfer. Some of these schools may be good places to investigate, to call them and see what it takes to transfer into them. In some cases, such as with my state flagship, they may be looking primarily at certain feeder colleges. You’d want to find that out. In other cases, there may be special programs for which you may not qualify. So, it will pay to do the research.
But there are definitely very good schools that take larger numbers of qualified transfers than Yale.
As for starting with an open enrollment school, well, look around! Maybe you’ll find someone who is a little more selective who will take you. But you need to remember that schools that are selective need to select on some basis. That basis is largely your previous academic record. From a student’s academic record, a school can observe the achievements a student has already earned, and can project what that might mean into the future. At this point, you don’t have that academic record to demonstrate to anyone what you can do. So, you need to build one. Thus, open enrollment.
It’s less important where you start and more important where you end up.
Maybe it is time to take a few hours and read Frank Bruni’s book: Where You Go is Not What You’ll Be.
It is the job of admissions officers to be cordial and welcoming, and they do that job very, very well. It isn’t personal, and it doesn’t mean that you have any reasonable chance at getting in to Yale or similarly selective universities with incredibly low admission rates.
You can choose to bloom at a lot of colleges that would be happy to have you. If you decide that they not worthy of your prodigious talents, you’re probably missing out on some really fine options.
What some of the commenters aren’t expressing as clearly as they could is that many good universities cannot accept a student who is not in good academic standing. The selective schools, the state flagships, all typically have transfer student language that says that a student must have left his or her previous college in good standing (in other words, eligible to go back there.) However, once you spend even a semester at a community college and end up in good standing (2.0 and above), then transfers are possible. The Yale website doesn’t contain the “must be in good academic standing” language but they do describe successful transfer students as having a 3.8 or above. For freshman applicants, they state, “An applicant’s academic strength is our first consideration.”
Sorry, but this line of reasoning never cuts it when it comes to college admissions. Think of it this way, for everybody they accept, they are rejecting many others. If there were to accept you based on your theoretical potential, it would mean rejecting candidates with demonstrated academic success at the highest levels. This is almost impossible to justify.