Hi all,
I’m currently a freshman at the University of Puget Sound. It’s a good school, but I want to be closer to my family on the east coast and I’m a bit frustrated by the student body as whole. It just does not seem like a good fit for me. I’m looking at transferring to a few other schools, not just UW–though it was my top choice last year–, so I want to know: do I have a shot?
Here are the stats:
Current first semester GPA: 4.0
High school GPA: 2.66 (I was quite the slacker in high school, although there certainly is an overall upwards trend.)
It is perhaps worth knowing that I went to a pretty well known elite high school in DC where a certain political figure’s children attends, so it does have name recognition as being a very hard school to go to, which is how I ended up getting into UPS.
SAT (although I’m open to taking the ACT for my application): 1875 (I can’t find the exact scores on each section, but I scored more or less in the 90th percentile for reading and verbal, and pretty low for math).
I’m assuming that UW is primarily going to care about my college grades and having a good essay, but with that aside, do I have a shot at getting in, or should I quit while I’m ahead?
Thanks!
If you’d like to transfer to the University of Washington, then you’d be best off transferring from a Washington State Community college. At this point if you applied for Fall then admissions would only see your first semester and nothing else in terms of college coursework. I know this because when I applied for transfer for Fall 2015, they only had my grades for up to the Fall quarter of 2014. Admissions would need to judge you a bit more based on your high school performance due to your lack of college coursework, which would be to your detriment. Couple this with the fact that students from other 4-year universities have an incredibly low 17% Fall transfer acceptence rate to UW and your odds are not looking great at all I’m afraid. I’m not sure how attending the UW will bring you closer to your family, but if you’d like to attend there the method with the best chance would be to enroll in a Washington state community college after this term ends, finish your major prereqs and maybe even your AA and apply after. You can even attend a CC in the Seattle area if that’s convenient for you.
fyi I’m planning on transferring for fall 2016 if that makes any difference?
also it’s much cheaper than ups, so I’d be able to afford flying out should I need to.
I think you have a shot, especially with a 4.0 in your first semester! But… as Readyandwaiting said… UW admits just 17% of transfers from 4-year universities. And if you don’t have more than 45 quarter credits at the time of application (by Feb 15, 2016 for Fall 2016) then they heavily weight your high school performance and test scores.
If you can spin your essay such that it’s clear you have a compelling personal need to attend UW (not just “I want to be a husky” ) then that really increases your chances of getting in! With your experience attending that prestigious DC school, that could make a really interesting essay. There have been several users on here who transferred from 4-year universities or from OOS, maybe some of them can chime in here for advice.
If you get denied for Fall 2016 and really want to transfer, your best bet is transferring to a Washington state community college and applying as a transfer from there, since UW accepts about 53% of WA state CC transfers.