<p>So the University of Notre Dame has been a dream of mine since I was born and its been the ONLY school I have ever wanted to go to and everything I have done has been to try to get into it. The only problem is, I will not get in, barring something crazy or a crazy increase in my SAT score.</p>
<p>Notre Dame has a pretty good transfer system, but it is pretty difficult to get in, the average GPA for college being a 3.7 or so. If I was to go to one of my other match/ reach choices that I am looking at (Boston College, Wake Forest, Southern Cal) and I get into one of those great schools and go, I will most likely not get a 3.7. </p>
<p>So I was wondering, have you ever seen anyone who went to a school that wasn't their favorite and really wouldn't go if it wasn't easy? </p>
<p>If I am not crazy, would you recommend schools that are easy to get A's? </p>
<p>Would it be better to go to one of my 3 state schools (Central Florida being easiest, Florida State being harder and U Florida being the most difficult)?</p>
<p>My stats are a 3.7 with 12 AP/AICE classes and a strong upward trend (3.2 9th grade), a 2060 SAT (620 CR, 670 M, 770 W) and pretty good EC's.</p>
<p>Speaking from experience, you can go to easy school then transfer to a more difficult one. I went to Drexel my freshmen year and applied to transfer to Emory, NYU and U mich. (Emory being most comparable to Notre Dame in this case) My college GPA was a cumulative 3.58. (3.5 first term, 3.7 second term) My SAT scores are also lower than yours. So it is possible.</p>
<p>Did you go to Drexel with the intent to transfer the next year? Or was it one of your backups that you wanted to attend over some other safeties maybe?</p>
<p>You’re going to waste one of your four years of college going somewhere that you don’t want to go, in order to get high enough grades to apply to a school that turns down most of its transfer applicants? That doesn’t make sense to me. Do all you can to get into ND, but if you don’t, Wake, BC and USC are all fabulous schools that students love. Go off to college expecting a wonderful long-term relationship with the place. Frankly, if I was 18 again, on that list of four options ND would come in fourth!</p>
<p>When I applied to college, I didn’t have any safeties because I didn’t apply anywhere that would have been difficult for me to get into. My SAT scores aren’t the best and my HS GPA was a 3.34 weighted - I didn’t do much academically in high school. I had all the “credentials” AP/honors classes/ 4’s on all my APs/tons of extracurricular, I just didn’t care when it came to most of my classes. Needles to say, I applied to places I would get into without any problems. I originally had no intention of transferring. However, when I got to Drexel and switched majors from engineering to poli sci and found out their poli sci dept. was much too small. Since I had greatly improved my GPA to fit in to top colleges, I then applied. HOWEVER, please realize that the schools you want to apply to are HARDER to get into as a transfer than as a freshmen. For example: ND admits 29% of freshmen and about 25% for transfer. This actually isn’t bad, some other top colleges have a MUCH larger difference. So just be aware of that fact.</p>