I’m honestly just curious if this ever happens. A student applies to a college as a freshman and gets rejected, so the next year they apply as a sophomore transfer student and gets accepted. Anyone heard stories like this?
Transfer admission is even bleaker than freshman admission
A student on reddit posted that he applied to William & Mary three times before being accepted. Once as a freshman applicant and twice as a transfer before he finally succeeded
Not for the Ivys…
Yeah I’m willing to bet it’s pretty hard. You have a better shot of that happening if you’re a freshman in another Ivy League school, or at least in a Top 20 school. The better school you’re in for your freshman year, the more chance you’ll have for an Ivy. And that’s assuming you’re maintaining a 3.9 or 4.0! Some Ivy League schools encourage more transfers than others, like Cornell or maybe Penn. I know Cornell in particular is pretty nice to transfers (that’s the vibe I got when I took a college visit there and they specifically asked if there were any students looking to transfer in the audience and they specifically talked about transfers).
I do know one girl who was rejected by the Ivys (waitlisted by a few) and ended up going to U. Michigan. She transferred to Brown after her Sophomore year.
The irony is that she regretted making the switch afterwards. She left all of the people and activities she knew well in search of slightly more prestige and found it difficult to have to start so much over again.
I know a person who was accepted at Cornell University and he transferred to MIT. It sounds incredible if you look at the MIT Transfer Success Stats.
Transfers within HYPSM and other Ivies is easier, but still low chance of success.
Where, what, why, and how well.
Where does the applicant want to go? What does s/he want to major in? Why that major? How well did s/he do in community college?
A quadruple like (Princeton, History, “just because it looks good”, 3.85/4.00) is a lot less impressive than
(Stanford; Physics; “I spent two summers doing research in condensed-matter physics with my advisor and am interested in continuing my studies with Dr. X at Stanford.”; 3.70 overall, 4.00 major).
Actually, Stanford (which is in the Pac-12, not Ivy League) typically admits about half of its transfer students from community colleges. However, Stanford admits very few transfer students overall, like many other super-selective schools.
Princeton admits no transfer students at all.