Difficulty of Transferring into Hotel Management

I was lucky enough to receive a likely letter for CAS at Cornell. However, I would really like to study hotel management if I went. I applied for arts and sciences because it’s impossible to get into hotel management with no prior experience. How easy would it be for me to transfer immediately upon arriving? Thanks.

at the information session when we visited, they made it clear they’d rather not have people gain admittance into one school and transfer into another… they didn’t say it’s impossible, but they are very wary of people trying to “bypass” individual schools’ admission process

If this is truly what you want to do, you may want to get that answer from Cornell, before submitting your deposit

Cornell is aware of “back door” transfer attempts. If you didn’t qualify for acceptance when you submitted your application to CAS they are not going to let you transfer in April.

People transfer between those 7 schools all the time. The only school that’s harder to transfer into is CoE, reason being it has more requirements. Some people would need to do it in 4.5 or 5 yrs instead of 4. Over the years my kids and nephews have been at Cornell, they’ve had friends who transferred from CAS to Hotel (this kid thought he wanted to run a restaurant, he is now working at a hedge fund), CAL to CoE (D1’s fiance), CoE to CAS, CAS to Architecture, etc. Each school has its own requirements for transfer, as long as you meet their requirements then you are allowed to transfer. Check out each school’s requirements.

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FYI - it is harder to transfer out of Hotel than transfer into Hotel.

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@TomSrOfBoston I don’t really see it as a back door. I didn’t have the opportunity to work in a hotel where I live. I would apply for a job at the Statler and work there for 6 months while taking easy classes to keep a high gpa. Then I would apply to transfer. Do you think that would work?

Here’s the info on internal transferring: https://sha.cornell.edu/app/sso/ugrad/internal-transfer-info.html

Cornell is fairly selective with their internal transfers to discourage applying to one school when you know you want to go to a different one. But people do it every year. Be aware though that you may not be able to if you do come to Cornell.

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You will be taking a risk by hoping for an internal transfer. Is UCLA your other option? That is your avatar.

@TomSrOfBoston I’ll find out tonight. And I am in-state so it’s a good deal but UCLA is not my top choice. I just took the pic when I visited and thought it was pretty.

I have gotten into Carolina, Michigan, and McGill which are all great options.

If going into Hotel management is what you want then why would you choose other options. By going to one of those schools is not going to give you a better chance of transferring into Cornell’s Hotel school. If not then Cornell’s CAS is a better choice than other options. You may want to consider UCLA if cost is a consideration.

Unless policies have changed since the integration with The Business College, there are a fair # of transfers into the Hotel School each year. I do not know how the figure breaks out between internal and external, but the sophomore class has significantly more students than the freshman class. As @oldfort posted earlier, transfers among the colleges are common, with Engineering and Architecture being the exceptions because of the course requirements.

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As a current Hotel School student, I can tell you that it is absolutely not hard to transfer into the Hotel School. The Hotel School admits a lot of transfers, and quite a few of them are internal. My best advice would be what you suggested yourself, work at the Statler Hotel and then transfer in - I know many kids who did exactly that. If you keep a high GPA and are able to write about how you enjoy hospitality after working at the Statler, I really don’t see how you can’t transfer in. Everyone I know who worked at the Statler to internally transfer into the Hotel School got in when they applied.

@BigNoodle thanks so much for the info. Seems possible now to transfer.