My S is about to be a TO soph at Cornell CALS. He actually received 2 TO’s – which were vastly different. For many reasons, I believe Cornell’s is top notch & not unethical to the student nor their 1st year school.
Cornell’s TO: Cornell CALS told him to go wherever he wants (CC, private 4 year, or public 4 year) & as long as he took Calc I, Freshman writing & plus a year of either Chem (w/labs) or Bio (w/labs) & got at least a B in those classes (& an overall 3.0+), he was guaranteed admission. However, he was only allowed to transfer in as his designated major & not permitted to change majors. This leads me to believe that they are actively seeking to gain students in less popular disciplines and/or they don’t want anyone “backdooring” their way into a more popular/impacted major, such as into Dyson. I don’t think it’s unethical to transfer, because students do it all the time for a myriad of reasons: they get better FA/Scholarship offers, don’t like the school, want to be closer to home, etc. The school my son is leaving actually has a high influx of transfers coming into to the school, so his space was grabbed up by someone else – someone who the university doesn’t have to give a large merit scholarship to.
USC’s TO: It was not guaranteed, except if you went to one of their “partner” schools in Rome/London/Paris, you had the best chance of being accepted (wink wink). USC didn’t want him to go anywhere except to one of their “affiliated” universities in Europe (like American Univ of Rome) because they said they didn’t want you to start at another 4 year school & then transfer out, hurting their retention rate. I don’t recall if a CC was ok or not. There was no restriction on staying the same major as the one you applied as (at least in A&S). The biggest problem with USC NOT accepting any credits from another 4 year school is that it basically means only wealthy, non-FA students can accept the transfer, as fed aid doesn’t apply to the foreign programs USC wants you to consider. This is a great deal for USC because you are technically accepted “need blind” but only those who can afford $70k at UA Rome for a year will actually come as transfers.