Prestigious undergrad scholarship (<3% of student body recieve it)
Siemens Semifinalist
Davidson Fellow (Award obtained after high school app)
3 Research Journal Publications (Obtained in college, wasn’t in high school app)
Working in 3 labs currently: Bioengineering and Clinical (Only worked in 1 lab in high school)
College ECs:
-Volunteering
-Clinical Work
-A few generic clubs and leadership positions here and there.
HS ECs:
-President in a bunch of clubs
-Medical internships
-2 Instruments (with awards in each)
-Football, Basketball etc.
-A Gazillion APs (all 5’s) also took Calc I-III, linear algebra and differential equations
-Other generic resume padders etc.
-A bunch of awards/competition medals (regional and states)
If I applied to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia and MIT, do you think I have a good chance at getting accepted to at least one?
Also I was rejected from Columbia in the normal app but they sent me an email inviting me to a transfer informational session. Do they send these to all rejected applicants or the ones that they thought were strong during the regular process?
Another note of concern is that my 1st semester GPA was extremely low due to psychological issues. I only had a 3.72 with a light courseload (12 credits). However, I’d like to think I made it up 2nd semester by getting a 4.15 while taking a much heavier courseload (19 credits).
Why do you want to transfer out of an ivy-league school to another school of similar status? Is there a program at any of these schools that you are interested in? It sounds like you’re prestige-hunting.
I would take into consideration that the number of transfer students that top-tier schools admit is extremely low. Good luck.
2 of my 3 current pubs (and another upcoming pub) are clinical research related. I’ve realized now that I really enjoy clinical research more than bench research. Unfortunately, there are no opportunities to do clinical research at the institution I’m currently at. All the schools I’ve mentioned (apart from MIT) have world renowned medical schools/hospitals doing groundbreaking clinical research right on their campus that I’d love to be involved in.
That being said, I know how competitive transferring is but given that I have a good publication record, do I have a pretty good chance in getting at least one acceptance from the schools I’ve mentioned?
@MugiWaraNo
I will hazard a guess that you go to Cornell given that it is the most grade-deflating ivy and Cornell kids tend to want to transfer at much higher rates than kids in the other ivies and lastly based on the grades/ credits you reported above.
Since you probably have been studying something STEM-related (I assumed that from your research etc) then your GPA is absolutely phenomenal so you have that down. Also your high school stats look great. However, transferring out of Cornell is gonna be an uphill battle for quite a few reasons.
The most important challenge you will face is explaining to the admission committees what you will get at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, MIT that your are not currently getting at Cornell in terms of academics, future career development etc. This is going to be very hard to do given that Cornell is an already exceptional school with great resources. Transfer admissions committees really hate transfer applicants who are just chasing prestige and are very good at sniffing them out. Given that you already go to a prestigious and strong university, it is going to be rather hard to convince them that you are doing anything but chasing prestige. So you might want to think really hard about actual, tangible benefits/ opportunities than these schools could give you that Cornell really cannot.
The other challenge is that there are many Cornell students wishing to transfer each year to places like HYPSM, Penn, Columbia, so you will face intense competition internally. Given that admissions committees will look unfavorably to begin with at applicants from super strong, already prestigious schools like Cornell, the chances go down dramatically.
Lastly, transfer admission to these schools is incredibly hard no matter what, and statistically speaking it is harder to get in as a transfer than as a first-year student.
The most important thing to understand is that you need to have a super convincing and compelling reason for wanting to transfer especially if it is out of a school as strong as Cornell.
As for my reason to transfer, 2 of my 3 current pubs (and another upcoming pub) are clinical research related. I’ve realized now that I really enjoy clinical research more than bench research. Unfortunately, there are no opportunities to do clinical research at Cornell, since its med school is in NYC (and there are no accessible research hospitals in Ithaca). All the schools I’ve mentioned (apart from MIT) have world renowned medical schools/hospitals doing groundbreaking clinical research right on their campus that coincide with my clinical research interests.
That being said, I know how competitive transferring is but given that I have a good clinical research publication record, would this be a convincing reason to transfer?
@MugiWaraNo Did you take subject tests? MIT requires a math and a science, even for transfer applicants. However I presume you should do fine on those.
Regardless of your application, it will be tough getting in as a transfer to those schools. For example, in 2012, only 15 transfer students were admitted to Harvard from 1,448 applicants - roughly 1% acceptance rate. Not clear why you want to transfer to MIT given that we do not have a medical school.
To boost your application, you will need a clear reason why you want to transfer (and communicate it effectively), excellent recommendations, and subject test scores (if you haven’t already taken them).
It’s just my personal opinion, but I feel that there are other ways to get involved in clinical research outside of applying to another ivy-league school. I don’t think that’s the real reason you want to transfer. There are plenty of schools outside of the ones you mentioned that offer clinical research as well.
I want to get into clinical research without attending a less rigorous school. I don’t want to trade off one opportunity (rigor/prestige) for another opportunity (research), I want them both.
And couldn’t your logic also be applied to community college students trying to attend a top 20 schools? They want a more rigorous curricula but they could easily transfer to a state school instead and take upper level courses. Many state schools also have the opportunities they need to succeed. Everyone wants prestige to some level whether or not they disclose it.
So try to transfer. Be prepared that it may not work out. In my opinion (based on your other threads) you are transferring based on a perception of prestige. I would invest my time and money on maxing out the opportunities you currently have, which are considerable.
@MugiWaraNo Yeah that seems to me like a convincing reason for wanting to transfer given your track record in publishing research. Also while MIT does not have its own hospitals it works closely with the Harvard-affiliated hospitals, so you would not be at the slightest disadvantage when it comes to doing clinical research. I would suggest, in addition to the schools you already mentioned, also looking at Penn for transferring given its super strong medical school and hospital and how easy it is for undergrads to engage in research at the hospital and medical school ( i speak from experience). Also Penn is definitely easier to transfer into than Harvard, MIT, Stanford & Yale so you d increase your chances by including it. Best of luck with your applications!
The nice one first: You are really impressive, and a great candidate for anything. Don't worry about one or two first semester grades. By the time you apply to transfer, there will be another semester in the books, and if it's as good as the last one those couple grades won't matter. They'll even contribute to an implied story about how you found your legs in college and then really outperformed.
Are you kidding? All of those colleges have 1-2% transfer admission rates. And that includes some recruited-athlete transfers and people coming from places like Deep Springs or being kicked out of West Point for being gay, who are superior candidates with no choice except to transfer. No one else has a good chance of getting into any of them, and applying to a whole bunch doesn't really improve your chances, no matter how good a candidate you are.
My anecdotal second-hand sense over the years is that people have almost no chance reapplying as transfers to a college that rejected them as freshmen, and that people who were accepted as freshmen but decided to go elsewhere have a decent shot at a transfer acceptance, even (especially) coming from a peer school. Other than that, coming from a peer college hurts, not helps – you aren’t lacking in educational opportunity where you are.
If you apply to all five of them, you have no chance to be accepted at any of them. Apart from a situation where you absolutely need to transfer (including currently attending a completely inadequate college), the only effective argument you have for a transfer is that there's something unique at the transfer college that you can't get where you are or, really, anywhere else. Well, with those five colleges, what you are saying clearly is that what you are looking for is more prestige than Cornell (one of two supposed "grade-deflating Ivies," and no one talks about transferring out of the other). That is going to get you rejected out of hand if anyone sniffs it in your application.
You need to get over yourself a bit. Cornell offers limitless opportunities for actual educational accomplishment. And that, not the name on your diploma, is what is going to propel you ahead in the world. If you are in bioengineering, several of your target colleges would be a step backward, and Columbia, because of its core, might well require an extra year to graduate if you transfer in as a junior. If you concentrate on getting the most out of your current situation, you are going to wind up ahead of where you would be even if you were successful transferring. And the worst thing you could do would be to let opportunities where you are pass by because you are focused on something that effectively amounts to a lottery ticket, not a plan.
My post above was written without the benefit of the OP’s statements about clinical research. (Two or three threads were merged; all of the other responses were from threads I never saw.)
Still: I’m not buying it. Being at Cornell doesn’t seem to have interfered with the OP’s ability to get his name on 2-3 publications involving clinical research, and he states that one of the labs in which he works has a clinical bent. Cornell may not have a medical school on campus, but it surely has non-MD faculty engaged in clinical research. Also, the OP’s target list for transfer applications omits several colleges that would be near the top of anyone’s list if what they wanted was academic rigor and access to cutting-edge clinical research at a top teaching hospital (e.g., Washington University at St. Louis, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Penn), all of which are meaningfully more realistic transfer targets.
I guess I wasn’t specific enough because I wanted to try and preserve my identity but I’ll try to be more specific:
I’ll use my reasoning as Yale as an example:
The type of clinical research I’m interested in is a very specific sub specialty that only certain medical schools/hospitals have. Yale is one.
Also Yale has a leading center specific for that specialty that I’m interested in that allows me to get hands on patient experience, allowing me to tie in my research with my volunteer/patient experience.
Yale also has the major (again very specific that only a few schools have) that is able to connect my curriculum with my bench research interests. At Cornell I feel a big disconnect between what I’m learning and my research because they don’t have this major.
This also doesn’t take into the account that I much prefer Yale’s lifestyle and social life (not entirely based on parties/drinking).
So now what do you think, given you know more specific information about why I want to transfer?