Clueless Transfer

Transfer Students
1

<p>Hey everyone!</p>

<p>I'm an undergraduate student starting at a public school in Nevada as a freshman in the fall studying International Affairs. I was rejected from the vast majority of the schools I applied to as an undergraduate student (Georgetown, UPenn, Barnard, Pomona, Amherst, Scripps, UVA etc. etc.) and ended up at a state school because I could not afford the out of state schools where I was accepted. I desperately want to transfer to a school that is actually well founded in IR/IA studies and would like to reapply to schools like Georgetown, Pomona, Wellesley and Barnard. However, I am pretty clueless about this process and would like to ask what I need to do within this next year to make myself competitive enough to get into this caliber of college and how do I actually apply? </p>

<p>So, for my student profile, I am a poor white girl who comes from rural Nevada and has been an AP/honors student my entire high school career. I got a 30 on the ACT and poorer grades that landed me with an 3.3 GPA upon graduation. I know I could have done better on my essays and selected a better topic per each school but I am first generation so I was pretty blind going into this whole process. I've worked as a state officer for the Future Business Leaders of America, participated as the captain of my speech and debate team and competed nationally, lived as an exchange student in England, won a scholarship through the National Security Language Initiative for Youth to live in India for a summer, currently am studying as fellow in the Benjamin Franklin Transatlantic Institute at Wake Forest University for the summer on scholarship with the state department, have led demonstrations against the public school system as an activist for student rights, and worked as an intern for an international NGO called Let Them Be Kids. I worked my butt off in high school but did not pull the grades and that is what crippled me going into applications. </p>

<p>Now, with a clean slate, I am wondering how I should go about applying as a transfer student to these prestigious institutions? Or should I just suffer for the next four years, get awesome grades, and aim to go to one for grad school? Due to my test score on the ACT, I am able to attend the top rung of core curricular classes at my university and the debate team at my college is the best in the nation, so I will definitely be participating in that. I hope to do model UN and I am working on a social entrepreneurship project that will hopefully do a lot of good for my community. After going through the application process this past year, it seems like the whole application process is a big game and I have no idea how to play. Because I am poor, I need to get into an institution that meets nearly all of its students' demonstrated financial need. </p>

<p>Thank you so much for your help and I hope that you are able to point me in the right direction. THANK YOU!</p>

2

<p>It sounds like you are on the right track, just keep up good grades and take courses that are important. If you can narrow down the list of schools that you really want to go to (which it looks like you already did), check for their transfer requirements and/or their articulation histories. You can even contact them and see if they will help you build a schedule with the intention of transferring. Getting the main requirements like Math/English/Science out of the way is probably a good place to start. I just checked and their transfer rates are roughly ~13% (if correct). </p>

<p>I will take Georgetown as an example, here is there transfer page:
<a href=“Transfer Application | Office of Undergraduate Admissions | Georgetown University”>http://uadmissions.georgetown.edu/transfer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>International Affairs Curriculum:
<a href=“http://scs.georgetown.edu/programs/11/bachelor-of-arts-in-liberal-studies-international-affairs”>http://scs.georgetown.edu/programs/11/bachelor-of-arts-in-liberal-studies-international-affairs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>You can always look at the course layouts from the different universities and pick classes with similar descriptions to the ones that they require. One thing I am doing is checking the descriptions from multiple universities, and taking classes that look like they would transfer to more all the places i’m interested in. But honestly you haven’t even started yet, you don’t know how much you will dislike/like your uni. If you don’t like it though, you can at least be following some type of schedule with the intention of transferring. </p>