Do I really have a chance of transferring to Cornell?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cornell University
1

Hello I am an international student who currently goes to university in Canada.
Cornell has been my dream school and although I was deferred and rejected from Cornell a year ago, I still have feelings for it (wow I sound like someone who can’t get over the relationship but whatever) so I am planning to apply transferring for spring 2019.

So here are my stats.
I’m applying to Design and Environmental Analysis which is in Human Ecology (I previously applied for it)

Gender: Female
Race: East Asian (Korean)
Hooks: none :((

Current School: University of Toronto (St. George) and I major architecture
GPA: 3.795

Extra Curriculars: an executive in a big volunteer club and volunteer in Roots & Shoots (it is a club related to environments). Also planning for internship and competition this summer.
Recommendations: do I need one? I have one or maybe two profs who I made good ties with and they seem to be great. One is from Princeton and Harvard and the other one is from Yale. Idk if admission would mind about the profs’ school but yeah.

High School GPA: 3.5 -3.6ish (I went to Canadian high school from grade 9-10 but graduated in American high school. I am only counting my junior and senior GPA but does anyone know if I can integrate my freshman and sophomore year GPA also? That would significantly raise my cumulative GPA.)
ACT: 31 (I’m going to retake it soon)
AP/IB: 4 AP and 1 IB

I have a lot of concerns. Firstly, I’ve never seen a case of someone who transferred from Canada to the states so I am confused with a lot of processes like counting credits and stuff (guess I have to contact the admission). Secondly, I know that Cornell accepts students from CCs in New York state and GT people primarily and I wonder if they have a place to accept someone like me who came from nowhere after receiving those people. So far looking at people who got in Cornell by transfer seems to be the one who had GT. Thirdly, my stats are not very outstanding. My GPA is not bad but not great, I don’t have much extracurricular, and I am East Asian (it seems like prestigious colleges have more high standards or even discriminations for Chinese/Korean/(and even Japanese??). I heard some stories).

My school is quite notorious for giving low GPA. Like my major has 2.9ish average, and it’s not even low compared to other majors. Would the admission consider the name of the University of Toronto and check the low average? I mean U of T is the renowned school globally and not trying to condescend or anything but I think that makes a huge difference with CCs regarding getting good GPA. Also, I tried to engage in a lot of school stuff when I first came to school and signed my names to a lot of clubs, but most them seemed to be inactive. My school is also famous for hard to socialize. (Yeah I go to the worst school for transferring)

Anyways, thanks for reading and feedbacks and opinions would be granted.

Thank you!

2

I know multiple people who did undergrad in Canada and did graduate school at top universities in the US (definitely in the Cornell-like sort of range). Most started at either U.Toronto or McGill. Thus admissions at the top US schools definitely know how strong and how challenging Toronto is.

Transferring to an Ivy League school is probably always a long shot, particularly without a “hook”. I think that it is probably worth applying, but also don’t rule out the possibility of graduate school in the US (or at top Canadian schools, of course).

3

Recommendations from professors at elite schools who never taught you are irrelevant.

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@TomSrOfBoston Oh no! They are professors in U of T. What I meant by the school names were the schools they went. I had class with them

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@DadTwoGirls Yeah grad school is what everyone says but I want to get job immediately after graduating because I don’t want my parents to pay more money for the school.

6

UofT Rotman Commerce or McGill Desaultels for BCom?

7

Can I just derail this thread and ask about your opinions on Cornell and UofT? I got accepted to both for engineering. I feel like Cornell is more prestigious (unless it’s not) but I really like the urban environment of the St. George campus. Why would you want to transfer to Cornell?