You have other threads about transferring to Stanford and Berkeley. Apply anywhere you like but If you truly want to leave Cornell you should add some less competitive schools to your list.
For transfer admission:
- Harvard: high reach, due to few students generally being admitted as transfers.
- Stanford: even higher reach, due to few students generally being admitted as transfers, and because Stanford favors non-traditional students in transfer admissions.
- Cal: admits only junior level transfers (60+ semester credit units (including in-progress course work) by the end of the spring semester before transfer) who have completed enough major preparation course work and some specified general education course work. https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/transfers-major indicates admitted transfers had college GPA 25th-75th percentiles of 3.88-4.00 for EECS and 3.89-4.00 for L&S intended CS. UCs also prioritize California community college students in transfer admission.
- Georgia Tech: someone else may know more
If you are not willing to continue at Cornell, you need to add some less-selective-for-transfer-students schools to your application list. Some students who want to transfer away from their frosh year colleges transfer to community college for soph year so that they can apply to other colleges as a junior level transfer. This is not unusual among California residents, because UCs and CSUs generally take only junior level transfers.
Based on one of the OP’s other threads, it looks like Cornell was the OP’s parents’ choice, not the OP’s choice. In http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21720270/#Comment_21720270 , the OP writes:
So it may not be anything about Cornell specifically, but the fact that the OP felt pressured or forced to choose Cornell over other colleges that the OP preferred may be the reason behind the OP not liking Cornell.
But most kids adjust, wherever they land. OP admitted his parents’ influence in this thread, too.
This is likely more than the parent issue.
One caution – telling Harvard or any other school that you want to transfer because you are suffering from depression (for whatever reason) will not bode well for your chances. Colleges are very wary of students suffering from mental illness and they won’t want to accept a student already potentially in crisis. You will need to be able to identify alternative reasons for whatever schools you apply to – i.e., a particular program or professor.
My last paragraph of #19 brought to mind a college advisor named Stephen Stills.
He wrote " If you’re not attending the college you love, love the one you’re at".
(taking some “artistic” license here…)
You should really work on that, even if you decide to transfer. Like I said.
Normally that would be the end of my suggestion. Also reminding you that you’ve only been there a couple months. Which is like nothing.
But if the therapist is also suggesting you leave, …
There is a point raised by #24 : your current school doesn’t really want someone suffering from these issues either, so they are possibly biased towards counseling you out, for their own purposes.
But that doesn’t mean they are wrong, and I am no therapist.
Cornell is a huge place. Cornell is an extremely diverse place. Make it your own.
For anyone still looking at this thread, the swim coach has offered me a position as the team manager to help me get through admissions
@chriddifer What swim coach? At Cornell? Get thru admissions where?
@sunnyschool the swim coach at Harvard. I currently attend Cornell but want to transfer
I’d even go out on a limb and say Stanford is not worth the app fee as yes, they not only favor non-traditional transfers, those non-trads come with really fascinating life stories.
Perhaps I missed it OP, but what is your GPA? What does “doing well” mean? B+/A-/nearly all A’s?
That’s nice, but unless the coach is willing to give up one of next year’s recruits to give you that kid’s “athletic tip”, it his nice word to admissions means almost nada.
btw: in addition to only accepting Junior transfers, Cal will be mighty expensive if you are not a resident. (UC finaid for non residents ain’t much.)
re #27, I’ve no idea how much that helps. It seems less than a full “athletic tip”, as suggested above. But maybe it’s not less…
Even so, they get so many applicants, for so few transfer spots. It can come down to stuff like is a team manager for swimming worth more to them than a hockey player, a basketball player, etc? Who needs who the most? Seems to me like the manager spot would be most easily otherwise filled, but what do I know. Maybe in that land of super alphas nobody wants to do support?
It may be good, heck I don’t know, but given the uncertainty, if I were you I’d cast a fairly wide net if you really want out.
^No helmet coach is gonna give up an admissions tip to the swim coach for a team manager. Ain’t gonna happen.
As you probably know, each Ivy coach only gets a few tips per year, with the helmet sports & b’ball receiving the most. On top of real admission tips, coaches can also add others to a kinda priority wish list, and (most of) those kids have to go thru regular admissions, where the wish list becomes more of a tie-breaker. Highly unlikely that will be enough for a transfer.
32, "As you probably know.."
I guess if “you” is OP, who has some connection to this process at least through his brother.
As for me:
As far as I recall, based on results, Cornell seems to care most about hockey (I guess hockey payers wear helmets) , wrestling (do they wear helmets?), some times lacrosse & track & field…
They do field football & basketball teams, but they are rarely particularly good. (That brief couple years where a team went to the sweet sixteen was a complete fluke, a unicorn.).
Still, they do have to man those teams.
I’ve no knowledge of the related admissions processes.
Or, more importantly, about Harvard’s.