To accommodate the increased class size, Koehler said officials are being “more selective” with transfer admissions and anticipate that about 150 transfer students will enroll this fall. Since 2013, about 270 students have transferred into the five main undergraduate schools annually, University spokeswoman Maralee Csellar said.
I can understand the reasoning from a university’s standpoint (as Georgetown had a similar situation), but reading that article and having this mess of an admissions cycle and seeing their social media accounts all but confirms to me that their transfer students are considered second-rate students. The proof is in the pudding.
I also called them again today to confirm what @angrytransfer said and they did reiterate the end of this week and said it more in a scripted manner today that their orders were from Head of Admissions and that they wouldn’t know for certain that the end of this week would truly be the end because of their backlog from the freshmen cycle.
Oh great… all this waiting and now a likely chance for an undesirable outcome. I hope I’m just being negative.
I get that the freshman admissions cycle is considered before the transfer cycle, but fr this is still the next few years of our lives in the balance. Admissions clearly had a lot on their plate but they’re handling it inefficiently. Let’s hope this week is the end of it for us 
@niiniin I don’t think you are. If it were two weeks after a deadline I might say some of us were being quite a bit impatient. The difficulty here is the number of times they have changed timelines and the lack of transparency. They have admitted to sticking to scripts and their emails are copy and paste equals. Just because we are college students doesn’t change some of the basic tenants of customer service. I’m a 26 year old veteran and even I can accept some latitude, but when my decision-making process is thrown out of a loop and I cannot make informed decisions like housing and communicating with the Department of Veterans Affairs. At this rate, I would be scrambling.
The part that has disillusioned me is that they have admitted to letting in so many freshmen that they have admitted to disregarding their allotment of transfer students. Many of you are extraordinarily bright, but a lot of us veterans (actually most) are transfer students. It actually poses a problem when growing rates of veterans are not graduating (either due to decreasing academics, a feeling of decreased motivation, lack of personal counseling) the current veterans that are in school are a direct result of government sequestration. I would love to see a world where admissions considers both freshmen and transfer evenly, but I digress. I’d love to put this entire admissions cycle behind me and not judge GW, even if I get into the school. This is why I want to help veterans at GW or wherever I end up; it’s because schools consider us second-rates (as all transfers), and some veterans really need the help to succeed in school and stay in it.
hi guys, I went to an admitted transfer reception and question panel today with about 40 admitted transfers in attendance (rough estimate) and the information that someone posted earlier about this being a smaller transfer class due to the size of 2022 is true. they told us that tonight. they also talked about how they received more transfer applications than ever this year which probably also contributed to the length of time it has taken to decide as they had very difficult choices to make with so many qualified applicants. just wanted to share that information and reiterate that yes, it is the case that this transfer pool will be very small. I hope y’all will hear back this week and that hopefully its good news!
I do find it amusing in a self-deprecating way that I’ve been accepted into more selective schools (10% less accepted on average) this year, yet I’m still worrying over GW because of how unique the situation is for their admissions. GW works the best for me because of its location and proximity to my State internship that I’ve been accepted to in the Spring. I don’t particularly care to move away from the city despite them being more prestigious/higher ranked schools overall - I don’t care much for rankings anyways. I live in Northern Virginia so it’s a commuter campus for me. If GW’s location and academics didn’t completely work for me, their behavior thus far would have totally steered me far away from DC.
I’m a bit confused. There was an admitted transfer reception today? We’ve been waiting for a decision for MONTHS now and still have nothing but some students are already in? Super confusing. So, I’m guessing that rejections will be sent out due to not having enough room. The class of 2022 debacle is not the fault of transfer students. We have worked hard and deserve to have a correct and honest chance to learn at GW! The possibility of that being taken away makes me want to absolutely scream. I can’t even begin to explain how annoyed and disappointed this makes me. Staying hopeful though!
@Sadboi99 Yeah, I absolutely loathe the politics of this all, especially the “we admitted too many freshmen because they are smarter than ever before” snafu. Anyone with an eye for critical thinking sees the: “We have so many qualified candidates that we let way more in than we intended” as an elitist statement that conveys condescension and is intended merely as a show for future students who consider the selective nature of a school as part of their decision. I’m in school to keep my head down, help where I can, but my main purpose is to get my degree and be a federal agent at State; I really don’t have the time to play duck-duck goose with admissions offices. I have a 3.73 with 59 credits, veteran that’s worked as a security force advisor in international security cooperation, volunteer work, outdoor instructor, and do honors whenever I can, State internship accepted for spring and summer (and both offices where I am interning say I am one of their top two qualified) and I’m just trying to go to the best school I can. GW has been consistently in-line with what’s reasonable with my qualifications. Props to anyone that can tolerate this, but this unorganized snafu has shown where their true loyalties lie.
p.s. I don’t mean to sound negative to anyone reading, by the way. I’m merely shocked, like most in this thread that a school is going to such extraordinary lengths to show transfer students that they are gadflies compared to freshmen. Reading the article in the previous page and the many quizzical replies to our emails and calls are just some of the many examples that proves our point. I’m going to take a break and see what the rest of the week holds before commenting back. Good luck to everyone.
This is just like Georgetown… [-( Maybe they are taking in more Freshman because it is more money than what they will get from transfer students?
Current GW student here: Saying GW “accepted too many freshmen” is slightly inaccurate. They accepted around the same number of students as they normally do. The problem is that way more freshmen have enrolled than they expected to. Yield percentages relatively stay the same, so the whole situation is unexpected, and has put the school into a complete frenzy. They cannot just accept the same number of transfer students as they have in the past because there is literally not enough room (dorm wise and class wise) to do so.
@JoeJae Freshmen typically get more scholarships than transfer students, which is common at many universities, so schools can easily make more money from transfer students actually.
@liveyourlife26 Accepted too many freshmen or not, explaining yield rate is being pedantic because the end result is still the same where a school has to scramble by decreasing their regular allotment of transfers over freshmen. And the article actually explained declining yield rates, yet this year sharply increased.
@liveyourlife26 That is not true about universities making more money from transfer students as the reason why they offer less aid. First, private universities make the most money in endowment and government subsidized programs. Even though the GI Bill and Yellow Ribbon program are “small” programs because of the amount of veterans versus a main class, this is not a big figure, yet it’s figured in that percentage. Private universities will not have a large percentile of subsidies over a public university.
Second, admissions prioritizes freshmen statistics over transfer statistics. One of the biggest areas this can be seen is graduation rate where many schools don’t even count transfer students, and they need to maintain and pad these scores over transfers, which are paltry in its volume. Enticing freshmen with financial aid over transfer students is a well-documented, storied case that it shouldn’t need reiteration. Moreover, these scholarships do not encompass the entire tuition. Due to the volume of four-year students over transfers (in cases like Princeton 99% of students came as freshmen), universities have auxiliary ways of making money like enrolling in campus healthcare and enticing additional meal plans and book supplies. Since transfers are only at the university for a shorter period, there is opportunity cost for revenue. Because they make more money with decreased financial aid doesn’t overcome the mammoth of freshmen admissions and their propensity to make their largest sum of money.
If you need a source, feel free to PM me, or google at your leisure. One of the sources is GWU itself.
@dcstorm97 Oh, I am definitely not saying them making more money = reason why they offer less aid as I know where private universities get most of their money. That is not what I meant to say at all as I agree with everything you said.
I am saying applying as a freshmen versus applying as a transfer to the same school - the freshmen applicant is likely to receive more (merit) aid. I have seen a lot of schools not give transfer students any merit scholarships, but do to freshmen applicants. If transfer student X and freshmen student Y have the same need based aid and a school does not give transfers merit scholarships, freshmen student Y will be paying less. Thus, a school will be “making more money” off of transfer student X than freshmen student Y.
Good luck guys! When I got my decision last month it was on a Thursday at 5PM.
Omg! You already got in?
I would love to message you privately but I don’t know how to do so. I have some questions.
Yeah there was a group that got in just before the end of May and it’s been dead silent as far as we know since then.