<p>Anyone have any successful transfers with a crappy high school record and a good college rec? If so, which college did you transfer to? What did you pull off on your ACT/SAT? What was your major?</p>
<p>I think everyone here could use a little bit of inspiration.</p>
<p>I know there have been such stories, so I hope they chime in here. </p>
<p>Good idea for a thread. I think this could be a Featured Thread, which I will do if it gets enough responses. Because it is a fairly common concern for transfers: kid slacked around in hs and performed at an entirely different level in college. Wants to know what that means for transfer chances, whether to wait for junior year transfer, what schools weigh hs less etc.</p>
<p>My basis for this thread came after coming across some schools that only accept standardized testing from high school. That means if you did horrible on your ACT/SAT in high school and took it at your current college and did a lot better, the score from your high school is the only one they will accept.</p>
<p>NYU is one of those colleges and it just knocked my morale down a couple of levels when I saw that.</p>
<p>I'm in the same exact situation! It's seriously not fair, considering people simply change, and it's almost as if big schools don't really care. I feel like though I'm doing well enough in college, nothing I do matters because the colleges I'm looking to transfer to place a large emphasis on your high school performance. </p>
<p>Which schools are you looking to transfer to?</p>
<p>Just transfer your Junior year, and the HS record won't matter as much. I got a 2.8 in HS...and in College I have a 4.0....I'm looking at schools like Cornell, Brown, Berkeley, etc.</p>
<p>I'm getting ready to put in my apps for the spring. I am one of the turn-arounds, with a 2.5 in HS and 3.9 in college (60 credits)... the life experiences I have had are my selling point (see – “finalizing college apps” for detail). Yet, life experiences/EC's only make up for so much, it will most certainly be an uphill battle for many schools. I do feel as though the poor HS performance does preclude me from being accepted to many top institutions, say top 40+. It will be interesting to see how my applications turn out!</p>
<p>Yeah, I f-d up early on too. Probably a 2.0 in h.s., 1070/1600 on SAT's. Dropped out of my first college by halloween of freshman year. Came home and screwed off some more at community college. Decided to take some time off, traveled, got my priorities straight. Went back last year and have a 3.96 so far. Seeing as how I graduated h.s. in 2001 and will be a junior transfer, I'm hoping my early work won't hurt me too bad. G-town and UVa don't require SAT scores from those who have been out of high school for more than 5 years; hopefully that's a good sign. By the way, I'm applying to Penn (CGS), UVa (legacy), G-town, NYU, USC, U. of Washington. Anyways, I guess there isn't much of a point to my post, but good luck everybody!</p>
<p>I dropped out of HS Junior year. Main reason was because i worked late through soph and junior to support myself and pay the bills due to a gambling problem that had left my parent unsupportive and unwilling to realize her responsiblity as a guardian. My CCC gave me a better time table to work on, so i wouldn't catch zzz's in my classes. I have 1 year left at my CC, cumulative 4.0 gpa. Im not going to take the act or sat because im primarily applying to the UC school system which does not require them. Transfer students kick ass and we don't even care enough to take names!</p>
<p>My situation was a bit less extreme than some posts I see here. I was a B+ student in high school (along with some C's) and somehow I made it into NYU (College of Arts and Science). Sometime during my senior year, I finally found a motivation to do better, because I felt I had disappointed everyone around me. My parents, sibling, relatives...I guess they had all expected something more from me.</p>
<p>Well when freshman year came, I focused on my schoolwork and tried to find my social niche. I made a lot more close friends than I did in high school and I found a way to balance my social life with academics. At the same time, I applied for a transfer to Columbia University because I wanted to go to school where there were more like-minded individuals. My year came to an end and I had a 3.85 College GPA as a biology major. When May came around, I got my acceptance letter from Columbia and I had this incredible feeling of accomplishment. It had always been my dream to go there, and at times, it seemed as impossible as trying to pick a star from the sky. But gosh darn it, I did it.</p>
<p>horrible student in high school... "ignores homework, low test scores, excessive talking, disturbs others"</p>
<p>low 2.4 gpa in HS
3.82 CCC gpa</p>
<p>got into ucla biz/econ, usc marshall, and ucsd management sciences... my high school valedictorian dropped out of pre-med and ended up doing econ at ucla LOL, loser.</p>
<p>moss-</p>
<p>For UCLA Biz/Econ did you have TAP or not?</p>
<p>Slacked off in HS, got a 3.3~ unweighted, and a 2.9? U-M GPA. My ACT, a horrid 29. After playing WoW since release, my GPA just was dead. It affected my ACT as I fell asleep during science section.</p>
<p>I was out of the country when applying for colleges, and so I went to my auto-admit school. A 3rd tier school, not bad, but not good. </p>
<p>I pulled a 4.0 first semester, and finished the year with a 3.95. </p>
<p>I had gotten my transfer acceptance to U-M LS&A in the middle of Feb with only 35 credits under my belt. It felt great. Now in less than a week, I'll be attending my new school, all decked out in Michigan stuff, hopefully completely my Pre Med classes with a high enough GPA to land me at Michigan again for their Med School.</p>
<p>a89, no I did not have tap</p>
<p>
[quote]
my high school valedictorian dropped out of pre-med and ended up doing econ at ucla LOL, loser.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>LMAO..........</p>
<p>Man, dropping out of pre-med to do something that has a fairly high potential long-term payoff?</p>
<p>"Loser," indeed... :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Only showed up at my highschool for the free lunch (I'm not even sure whether I'm eligible for college in my homecountry). Ended up at a community college in America, loved it, got a 4.0, transferred into Yale. It's really all what you decide to make of it - school can blow your mind if you let it.</p>
<p>Had a 3.4 in HS. Not a huge amount of EC's. Took a 3 1/2 year break. Went back to a CC, had a 3.84 which is good but would have been all A's and one B had I not had retarded teachers. 64 credit hours. Took act/sat in college. act - 23 (ouch) sat I - 1760 Sat II's 620 610 590 (meh) Going to Brown in a couple of weeks. I think what got me in was the work experience, unique hobbies (weightlifting/baking), tons of independent learning starting when I was 12, great rec's (all said I was on the best students they'd had in 30 years, I had one rec from a HS english teacher who said I had the highest vocab scores she had in her career). Also my essay was pretty non-standard.</p>
<p>Wow! Congratulations frrrph and renix.</p>
<p>Are you an international student frrrph?</p>
<p>I'll also add to this discussion. In high school I was a 3.4 student, weighted, with decent mid 1300's SAT scores . To be fair, I would not call myself a slack-off as many above have since I would like to think that I was quite involved in my school and had several leadership positions of which to speak. My college options were pretty limited so I went to the most well reputed school to which I gained admission, despite it being a horrible fit, figuring in the back of my head that it would put me in the best position to transfer out of if I indeed ended up doing so. </p>
<p>My first semester of college, at a top 30 LAC, I worked myself sick to get a 4.0 taking a well distributed course load while ensuring that I made close connections with a couple of teachers from who I would later ask to write recommendations. I should mention that this was in addition to working for a 4.0 my senior year of HS after reality had set in. I continued to pursue the same interests I had demonstrated in high school, which I feel is invaluable for a number of reasons, by joining student government, staying involved in athletics and participating in the local community when I could. I retook the SAT after putting in the appropriate amount of studying time, boosting my score by over a hundred points. I sent colleges my own mid-semester progress report second semester reflecting that I was in the A range in all of my classes, along with a short personal note reiterating my reasons and desire to transfer to each school.</p>
<p>The list of colleges to which I applied in the Spring was a list of 9 completely new schools; all schools I would not have even considered as "reaches" just a year earlier. The schools to which I gained admission included Wesleyan, G-Town, Tufts, Wash U (where they offered a 90% full merit scholarship) and a waitlist from Brown. I also faced rejection from a number of other Ivies, who suggested that my academic record was too succint to transfer after just one year. I pursued the waitlist at Brown in person and was already sold on the school when I received my admittance just a week later. </p>
<p>The opportunities and experiences that have been accorded to me after a year at Brown have truly been life altering. Furthermore, the wretched and testing process of transferring made working toward a 4.0 at Brown seem painless. I hope that this forum serves not as a medium for students to boast about their individual successes, but rather as one where students who may not be completely content with their current universities can look for a realistic exposition of the transferring process as they begin to chart their own narratives.</p>
<p>I basically didn't attend the majority of my last year of high school due to personal/family issues. My grades seriously dropped and I received a 3.5 <em>shrugs</em> oh well. Threw me out of the running for all of the universities I'd applied to, a few even rescinded my admissions.<br>
Now I'm at California State college with 3.9 GPA. Hopefully when I make this second attempt I won't get rebuffed. =/
Good luck to everyone! We all are more than qualified to get in to the schools we're after!!! ^^</p>