So, I kind of messed up. I had a very poor junior year GPA (3.3) that is limiting my college options greatly. It contrasts starkly with my 3.8 GPA from freshman and sophomore year and the 4.0 GPA that I will earn this (my senior) year. I have gotten into 3 mid-to-upper-ish tier public universities so far (Penn State, U of Pitt, and Virginia Tech). I realize that none of these schools are bad by any means, but ideally I would like to be able to transfer to a top 25 University after freshman year. This may sound ridiculous due to the fact that I haven't even started my freshman year, but I have several reasons for attempting this. I realize that I may change my mind, but I would like to have the option because who wouldn’t? I plan on majoring in some combination of physics, computer science, material science, and economics. Yes, these are very all over the place and may seem random, but I have a genuine interest in all of them and haven't been able to make up my mind yet. My question is: How realistic is it for me to think that I can transfer to a top 25 school (Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Middlebury, Boston College, Northwestern) after earning a 3.7-4.0 GPA freshman year (obviously a best case scenario) while taking into account my 4.0 from senior year (6 AP Classes including BC Calc, AP Physics 2, AP Computer Science) and also my 3.2 from Junior year(5 AP Classes)? Do any of the schools that I have gotten into give me a better chance than the others?
Sidenote: I will graduate HS having taken 14 AP classes and my SAT is 2000 if that gives you a better Idea of me. I realize that other factors such as involvement and essays play a significant part in these chances as well, so let’s assume they are above average, but nothing monumental like starting a major nonprofit or overcoming cancer.
Why Top 25 only? Would #26 not be good enough for you? Seems awfully limiting to only look at a certain number of schools to which you are in no way guaranteed admission.
So currently you have around a 3.7 or 3.8ish GPA and a 2000 SAT? Transfer acceptance rates are often much lower than freshman rates – would you have gotten into those schools on your high school profile alone? If not, what will make them accept you as a transfer?
What’s your CR/Math breakdown? Boston College sounds like your best shot, of the ones you mentioned.
You probably already know this, but all the schools you’ve already been admitted to offer Material Science, but I’m pretty sure Boston College, Swarthmore, Middlebury, and Bowdoin do not.
I think the schools you’ve already gotten into are pretty nice schools.
I understand that you may be feeling disappointed with your options right now, and that if you’re around the kind of people who think where you go to school defines you that you feel the need to prove them wrong, but my advice would be to pick the school where you think the programs dovetail best with your interests and that you’ll be the happiest. Go next fall with a plan to put everything into making it work. If you’re not loving it and think you’d be happier somewhere else, the transfer option will still be there, but it’s possible that you’ll decide you don’t need it. At any of those schools, you can get a great education, so it’ll be what you make of it. The only thing that’s certain is that if you start with the idea that you’ll be out of there in a year, you won’t be giving it a fair shake.
As a transfer student, less emphasis is placed on your high school grades. But, if you’re applying for transfer while a college freshman, you will only have one semester at the time of application review and thus the review of your application will be weighted heavily upon your academic achievements in high school as well as your standardized test scores. If you were to apply as a junior transfer, with three academic semester in tow, less emphasis is placed on your high school transcript and more on your performance in college.
Now, all of that being said, high GPAs are more difficult to get in college and the conventional wisdom for private school transfer students is that if you could have been accepted as a college freshman, you will probably be viable as a college sophomore transfer. For junior transfers, it will depend extremely heavily on your academic accomplishments and extracurricular pursuits in college.
tl;dr Work hard in college, get involved, and, yes, you’ll have a good shot at a top 25 school. But, who knows, you might like it at wherever you decide to go as a college freshman.
Just a heads up. If you’re intending to apply as a transfer student you may want to be aware that some smaller elite LAC’s won’t consider you if you’re applying as a transfer from another small LAC. They really only consider students who are genuinely interested in making the switch to a smaller, more intimate setting.
DO you have a budget or can your parents pay for anything?
Because transfers get lousy aid.
So, if you’re dead-set on leaving the three fabulous universities that admitted you, perhaps you should take a gap year and work, and reapply to get admitted as a freshman (at the universities you listed, it’s much easier than to transfer in.)
In addition, you need to have a legitimate reason to transfer, such as “the university I’m at doesn’t have my major”, and that will be hard to prove when you’re going from universities with 150 majors to universities with 60… especially if you’re interested in economics and physics, which are offered everywhere.
Finally, a student with a 3.7-4.0 in high school should AIM FOR a 3.5/3.6 freshman year (to give you a proper perspective on college grading, med schools, which want the best of the best, consider 3.5-3.6 perfectly acceptable.) Most college students will be formerly good high school students. Almost all of them think they’ll get A’s. And guess what? 3/4th won’t. So, betting on something as rare as a 3.7 in college is not wise.
Really, think it through: would you rather take a risk, take a gap year, and work somewhere to try and apply to Top 40 universities and LACs (+ obviously the universities that already admitted you… although re-admission is not guaranteed!)? Or would you rather attend one of the universities that admitted you, giving yourself 100%? Only you knows the answer.
But attending somewhere with the intention of transferring sounds like a recipe for disaster, socially, academically, and generally speaking.