Hey everyone! I’m currently a sophomore at a US News and Review Top10 school who has come to realize that the university that I am attending isn’t ideally serving my interests and goals. I’m passionate about environmental science, but my current uni has a massive focus on energy and environmental engineering whereas I am much more interests in environmental policy and environmental justice (much more of a social focus). Along with that there are problems with access to professors and research positions, and the social scene is pretty intensely greek.
I wanted to know if those reasons sounds compelling enough to be valid in a transfer application to the Ivy League?
I was primarily considering Yale, Harvard and Columbia, (and Stanford outside out the Ivy League) but would love any advice.
Background:
College GPA: 3.98
Extracurriculars:
Student Government Senator
Student Rep on President’s Committee of Sustainability
Debating Society - VP
First Year Advisory Council Board
Model UN - Director of Competitive Team
Internships:
Local Environmental NGO
Geneva, Switzerland NGO (Summer Abroad)
Research:
Heavy Metal Lab - Published Paper
Stanford Indigenous Policy Project - Working Paper
Honors/Awards:
National Merit (Highschool)
Presidential Nominee (Highschool)
UN Fellowship
Sierra Club Fellowship
Highschool Statistics:
GPA - 4.0/4.0 (UW), 5.2/4.0 (W)
ACT - 36, 33 (Writing)
SAT - 2220
Would appreciate any and all feedback. Trying to decide if it is even worth the time to fill out an application - anybody with experience doing a junior year transfer I would love your advice on how that went/what were the challenges.
Why Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford for environmental policy and environmental justice? Have you specifically researched their programs and concluded that they are the best available? Or are you hitting on those four institutions because you are scared to transfer “down” for your change of major?
@Kizzys So it looks like you are attending Penn or Duke? If it is Penn, rather surprising that you have issues with access to professors and research positions since there are so many and CURF is pretty good about finding stuff for students. Penn is known for that, But each case is different I guess. Also greek life is a significant part of student life but it is far from dominant. There are tons of people who don’t participate and have active social lives outside the greek system. Dont really know much about Duke though.
Anyway, I think your biggest barrier to transferring is that you are already at a university that provides top notch resources so it will be rather hard to justify that you can’t find what you are looking for there. Does Columbia, Harvard, Yale or Stanford have a demonstrably bigger focus on energy/environmental policy than Penn/Duke? You need to research this in detail and come up with concrete examples where these schools are meaningfully stronger than Penn/Duke. You need to convince the schools why they should let you in instead of another highly qualified student who is not a top university and thus would benefit tremendously if they were accepted.
I think your best chance would be Columbia. Harvard, Yale, Stanford take an absurdly small number of transfers and most of them are usually from lower tier schools that do not provide comparable opportunities to the ivies.