First year student looking for transfer/general advice

Transfer Students
1

Hi,
Background Info:
I’m going into my first year of undergrad this September at NYIT Old Westbury’s BS/DO program. I was accepted with max academic scholarship everywhere I applied, mostly local colleges (LIU, CUNY Hunter and Baruch, Fordham). Out of high school my gpa was a 86 with 6 aps, all 4s and 5s, 1400 sat, 30 act. Played two sports. Plenty of extracurricular / volunteering / work experience. I am an Asian male if that matters.

I was not pushing myself through school and not working hard enough all of high school. Rarely did my hw in senior year. My stats were really low due to plenty of personal problems in 11th-12th grade, combined with my lack of diligence and personal responsibility to pursue good grades or merit. And with my close friends that asked me for help on their hw going to Yale, Brown, Colby and the like I’m feeling lost sitting back at home going to a local college even with my scholarship and accelerated program. I didn’t have the courage to apply to any ivies with my scores. Hopkins denied me outright and Nyu didn’t give me a second glance even though I know kids that got in with lower stats and such.

My original goal back in 2017 was to go to Cornell undergrad to be able to secure a seat for the Wiell Cornell school of medicine. I’m keeping that as a transfer possibility, if anybody can give me insight into how Cornell handles transfers and how i should prepare to transfer there it would be a huge help.

I’m still holding my career paths open to either medicine or physics, but definitely focusing on medicine at the moment. I’m shooting for ivy level schools, I’ve looked at U Texas Austin and other schools for medicine and I’m pretty lost as to exactly what schools I should shoot for. Also seeing as my stats are still quite low I wanted to know if retaking the sat and maybe taking a few sat iis would be necessary, and how i should approach my academics and such this first year in college.
Thanks for anyone that read through all of that and deciphered all my gibberish.

2

The high-prestige places you are dreaming about right now will look at your high school record. If you couldn’t get in as a freshman, you probably won’t get in as a transfer, even with the top grades you will be working for as a pre-med. For Cornell, a better path might have been through one of the NYS community colleges that have articulation agreements with the NYS divisions at Cornell. But since your career goal is medicine, your current BS/DO program is the superior option. Yes, even better than that Ivy-peer undergrad program you think you’d rather be in. Why? Because you are guaranteed your medical training provided you meet the requirements. Many, many pre-meds with good records do not get a single admission when they apply to MD/DO programs.

Stop prestige-hunting for now. Focus on being a good candidate for your residency after finishing your DO. In the long run, that is what will matter. No one will care where you did your undergrad work, few will even notice that you have a DO (except for patients who prefer that their physicians have a DO). What will matter is where you complete your residency, and your progress within your specialization.

3

You should concentrate on maintaining your eligibility to continue to the DO program, including a 3.5 college GPA, high MCAT score, getting good recommendations, and doing well in the interview.
https://www.nyit.edu/arts_and_sciences/osteopathic_medicine_bsdo_admissions

4

Don’t go into college thinking about transferring. It isn’t helpful or fair to you, especially due to how few transfers Ivies accept.

5

What is your goal? to be a doctor? Why would you give up a program that almost assures you of being a doctor?

You seem to think: I am smarter than my GPA. I am smarter than NYIT…i think I deserve ivys.
Well, colleges don’t accept you based on what you could do, they accept you on what you did do…and you got into a competitive program why woudl you give that uP?

6

First of all, thank you everyone for your input.

Yes, my goal is to be a doctor. I’m willing to give this program up in the hopes I get into a more prestigious/notable school. My life is going to keep going and I’m going through college just once, I want to be able to make it the best use of my college life as possible.

I realize I didn’t make this clear in the op, I’m hoping to transfer to be able to catch a seat at one of these top flight med schools, NYCOM isn’t top flight and it’s quite expensive. Applying to those med schools out of undergrad here gives me much lower chances than if I do my undergrad in those schools.

I’m hoping a good college record will outweigh my underwhelming hs record. How much is my high school performance going to impact my chances, and am I wrong in thinking that pursuing medicine at a top flight school is worth the transfer.

7

bopper, I can see you’re going to case western, what are you studying there? Also can you tell me about their med school?

8

It’s great you are aware you could have worked harder and are now committed to doing so.

Med school will require strong grades in college, strong MCAT scores, and lots of meaningful service hours. Your high school record won’t count for anything, that will be far behind you by then.

Here’s my advice:

Go into it committed to your school. You will find great faculty, staff, and students. Learn from them, learn with them. Put transferring out of your mind. It’s a more positive approach. You’ll make more friends and have better relationships. Then do a check second semester and ask yourself what you think of transferring at that point. If you are still there, sophomore year do it again. Otherwise commit yourself to where you are. As a rule of thumb, the further along you are in college, the less your high school record is going to count. If you applied to transfer after two months of college, they will go by your hs record. If you are applying second semester of sophomore year, a school will solely use your college transcript, or nearly so. They then don’t need your hs record to predict how you’ll do in college. They’ll have direct evidence

When you get to college,

Go to class. There is no substitute for that.

Do all your assignments. On a ten-point scale (90-100=A, etc.), missing two points on missed small assignments means a 20% chance of getting a letter grade lower.

Get a tutor, especially for intro bio and chem and other science classes. This is not for weak students but strong ones. These classes are hard for incoming freshman. Help is going to be available at most schools. You are paying for it, so take advantage of it. We went to a pre-med advising student, and the pre-med advisor, a chem professor, said almost all his students who received A’s had gotten tutors at the beginning of the semester, not after they had bombed the first test, which is when most students get them.

Not necessarily from Day 1, but you will want to do lots of service hours, including lots in some sort of medical position, like a voluntary EMT. Med schools really want to see this now.

Don’t worry about the quality of med schools now. That’s far down the road. Focus on the task at hand. That said, CWRU has an excellent med school. But enough of that.

Get ready to work hard out of the gate, which I guess is in a weak or two.

Good luck!

9

All US medical schools are elite / reach-for-everyone admission.

A slightly less difficult path like the one you have should not be given up lightly.

10

This is completely magical thinking. Weill does not give priority to Cornell undergraduates- and Cornell is a tough place to get the kind of grades that get you into med school. I know Cornell students with 3.9GPAs who were turned down- pre-interview- by Weill. Going to Cornell for undergrad does NOT mean that you will get into Cornell med school!!

A fancier name on your application is not going to help in med school applications. Your GPA + MCAT will matter much, much more. Satisfy your itch for prestige by going back to your 5 year HS reunion as a med student and 10 year reunion as a Dr.