I just finished my first year of SUNY Community College and I thought it went pretty well. I will give you my stats and see where I lay a good chance.
HS GPA: 85% (We didn’t use a point scale)
SAT: 1410 out of 2400 (I have seen that SAT scores don’t matter for transferring so I probably wont retake)
I never did any APs but I was straight A's and B's in pretty much all my Math and Science courses
Through my first year of CC:
CC GPA: 3.3 (I plan on rising this to a 3.7-3.8)
Courses I have taken:
Trig/College Algebra (B)
Calc I (I taken this twice. I gotta D first semester and an A second semester)
Intro to Computer Science (A)
Programming and Logic I (B)
English Comp I & II (A’s in both)
Literature Into Film (C - This class kinda sucked)
Macroeconomics (B)
American History I (A)
Courses I plan on taking:
Calc II
Physics I & II
Programming and Logic II
C++ Programming
American Literature I
Extras:
I have a part time job where work about 20 hrs/week since my Senior year in HS
I am an administrator for a programming website where we help out other people with programming problems (Stack Overflow)
In HS I played in AAU basketball and HS basketball
I have served in community service. I served at a local retirement home and helped the elderly people. I also did church work where I served at a homeless shelter.
I assisted coach a local CYO basketball team from grades 1-5
With a 3.3 GPA Columbia is out of reach.
I don’t want to be rude but… (well, take my advise with a grain of salt)
explicit answer: 0% at best.
Is the above true? Of course not. But from my experience, most transfer students who aren’t doing 3-2 to Columbia are from peer schools. Generally a top CMU CS department student OR a top Dartmouth student OR a top UPenn student OR a top WuStL student OR a top Duke student OR a top Stanford student OR a top Yale student.
Most of my friends who were transfer students pretty much had 4.0 in these schools and were taking near graduate level courses since end of first year. (basically students that could come to Columbia fully funded for phd (or are super super super super super rich/powerful). Ouch!)
You will be competing against these students. After all, transfer is harder in top colleges.
So unless you have some huge accomplishment that we don’t know of or out of this world recommendation/essay, I honestly don’t see much hope. I really feel most transfer students had the academics to come into Columbia for grad school and would have been successful regardless.
That said, if it’s your dream school, give a chance.
Have you read the information on the Columbia website for transfer students? It states a 3.5 overall GPA at a minimum to have any chance at all. And it also says that they DO look at your HS GPA and SAT scores.
You’re not a candidate for Columbia right now. You’d need to retake the SAT and also improve your college GPA.