Great Article on Transfers in Wall Street Journal

<p>There's a great article in Wall Street Journal about transfer admissions.
Unfortunately, it's only available to subscribers online and I can't report it on this board. So subscribe, buy a hard copy or get it illegally somewhere online (not from me though.)</p>

<p>Anyway, the gist of the article is something like- it used to be that students transferred because they were unhappy with their first school. The new phenomenon however, consists of lots of students already at great schools but simply want to go to a 'better' (please note better is in quotations) school-i.e. Columbia to Harvard or Michigan to Yale etc.</p>

<p>What is interesting however, is that 'some' employers do not necessarily see this as 'prestige whoring' (a term that seems to have gained a bit of currency on this board) but as Morgan Stanley's Vic Garber, managing director for fixed income puts it: often when he sees a transfer on an applicant's r</p>

<p>It grossed me out. The kid transferring from Columbia to Harvard, interested in broadcast journalism? Wow, what a waste! And the kids who has devoted his first semester at Michigan to his trade-up strategy? I would ostracize him, too, just like the people he knows there.</p>

<p>Obviously, some kids make bad decisions, or get stuck at schools that are not suitable for them, and other schools have room for them, so there's nothing wrong with transfers. But going from Columbia to Harvard? Fine, that might be attractive to Morgan Stanley; let Morgan Stanley have 'em. As far as I'm concerned it's just naked, valueless prestige whoring.</p>

<p>It bothered me as well, but I'm afraid it's an accurate reflection of what's going on out there. As a "transfer parent," I spend a lot of time on the Transfer Board here and see both types: (1) those for whom the current school is a genuine poor fit despite attempts to take full advantage of the place and (2) those who are pure prestige-mongers, some of whom haven't even finished Orientation before they're focused on trading "up". Way too many of this latter category. Oh and there's a third category: community college kids needing to move to a 4-year school; this group divides, also, into prestige-mongers and genuine kids. The latter group includes some truly salt-of-the-earth kids whom it is a pleasure to advise and root for.</p>

<p>And the kid who moved to Harvard and then commented that it was "ironic" since her left-behind school of Columbia was so strong in her journalism major. Yuk, yuk, double yuk.</p>

<p>My overall reaction is the same as JHS and jmmmom's reaction.</p>

<p>The reporter who wrote the article posted on the CC Parents Board a few weeks ago asking to speak to parents of transfer students, and I responded to her request and was interviewed by her. However, she did not quote me or call my daughter, probably because what I told her did not fit the premise of her article. (I went to the library and copied the article after seeing here that is was published, out of curiousity.) My daughter applied to transfer because she was (unexpectedly) very unhappy with some aspects of her first school, although she tried her best to be happy and fit in. It did turn out that the college she transferred to is ranked higher than her first college, which is also an excellent one, but my daughter was not motivated to transfer by a desire to increase her prestige or to game the system. In fact, she avoided applying to transfer to other highly ranked schools which had the same characteristics that she disliked at the school she was unhappy at. </p>

<p>The article speaks of students who use college counselors extensively to help them with their transfer applications and essays, who retake their SATs in order to attempt to gain 100 points, who choose their courses and join activities as freshman in order to impress the admissions office at the schools they are applying to transfer to, and who try to "game the system" by applying to transfer to less selective programs at prestigious schools instead of the programs they are really interested in. I told my daughter about the article (I will mail her a copy) and she said, "That is stupid! Who would want to spend their time in college doing things like that?!" </p>

<p>The quote which "grossed me out" the most (to use the same phrase as JHS above) was from the mother of the University of Michigan freshman who is supposedly overworking himself in an attempt to transfer to Cornell. The mother is worried that he is exhausting himself and also that he would be giving up a scholarship if he left Michigan. But she said, "Part of me would love to be able to say, 'I've got a kid at an Ivy League school. How cool would that be?' " I don't think it would be cool - I think it would be SICK if his major reason for wanting to leave Michigan is that it is not "Ivy League"!</p>

<p>The one useful part of the article is a sidebar chart showing the transfer acceptance rates at 20 schools. If someone is applying to transfer, they should try to find out what the acceptance rate is, as some schools take almost no transfers while others take quite a high percentage. This information is available on the USNews online edition, under the "Transfer" section for the school. (Number who applied, number admitted, number who chose to attend).</p>

<p>I'm so writing to the editor that this angle is so skewed towards painting a picture that transfers are nothing but name-brand obsessed. I honestly personally don't know any transfer who feels this particular way.</p>

<p>Here goes to my first draft... :)</p>

<p>That's a good idea, ticklemepink. If it gets published, can you let us know here on this thread, so we can check it out?</p>

<p>I also was interviewed, as the author contacted me. I didn't expect our case to be used, as it was such a special case in terms of reasons for transferring (due to Tulane's elimination of EE). I don't think, btw, that the author slanted things <em>too</em> much, because I do think a fair amount of the transferring is focused on prestige. There is a similar thread going on right now on the Transfer Forum where all the kids are agreeing with each other that you can't go to lowly UVA or UCLA but have to go to HYPSM if you want a consulting job with the most prestigious firm. Yuk.</p>

<p>There are probably a high proportion of transfers doing it for the "right" reasons, but I don't know the proportions.</p>

<p>I knew two men back in the 1980s who attended four colleges each as undergrads, successfully transfering their credits each time and finishing four-year degrees in four years. They saw a lot more of the country than I did while doing their undergraduate degrees. I think it's GREAT that students transfer to colleges that they desire. It's a free country. If employers think that shows initiative and drive, I would have to agree with those employers based on the transfer students I knew in my generation.</p>

<p>jmmom may be right that many of the transfer applicants are prestige-driven -I have never read the Transfer Forum, so I have no knowledge of this. In fact, I was not on CC during most or all of the time my daughter was applying to transfer. But their line of thought is so far from the line of thought that my daughter went through that I have a hard time relating to it.</p>

<p>I must say, there's a quite a large percentage of transfer who came to Harvard this year to be closer to home. A good amount are Boston-area natives.</p>