<p>Based on these posts it appears that BU is telling some 2013 applicants to enrol at another college for their freshman year, get a 3.0, and you are guaranteed admission as a transfer in 2014. </p>
<p>This strikes me as highly unethical. It will hurt the other colleges' retention and graduation rates and deny a space to another applicant to that college for whom it may have been their first choice.</p>
<p>I don’t think this is new – I know someone who went to Cornell that way. She started at our local state school. She was a well-qualified student and a legacy.</p>
<p>I’m wondering if colleges might use this as a really really soft turn-down, though? Many students don’t want to transfer, especially after they go to a school and settle in and make friends and join activities. There could be students who think they want to transfer and when it comes down it don’t end up doing it. And of course if students got admitted to a better or comparable school, they’d probably just end up going there. I’d be curious as to what percentage of students who receive the guaranteed transfer acceptance actually end up using it.</p>
<p>I also wonder if BU would require a student who takes this offer to submit a non-refundable deposit which would be forfeited if they decided not to transfer.</p>
<p>Way back in 1979, William and Mary guaranteed me transfer admission when I was admitted and chose to go elsewhere. I don’t think this is anything new at all. I just thought of it as a nice backup plan.</p>
<p>edit: just read the BU thread that is linked. BU is accepting kids but telling them they can’t come as freshmen, and have to go somewhere else (community college? just says a degree-granting college) for a year first. That’s a bit different than being promised admission as a sophomore after declining a regular freshman admission decision, which is what W&M did for me.</p>
<p>Seeing as BU is about $60k, this could be an attractive way to get a BU diploma but save significant money by doing your first year at a community college. You could just get some gen ed/distribution requirements out of the way.</p>
<p>An interesting twist on the Z-list idea.
Harvard admits a dozen or so to the following year’s class. They have to take a year off–I don’t think they can enroll elsewhere.</p>
<p>Several reasons I can think of on why BU may do this. One would be to make sure that an applicant can do well in college level work, to keep their freshman stats high and help with ranking, and/or to fill the seats of those leaving after their freshman year (their retention rate is 91%). It seems like a win for both the university and the student.</p>
<p>I can see this might be a way to admit kids you weren’t really sure about, maybe were worried about maturity issues for example or poor high school preparation - let another college get them seasoned. I’ve never completely understood what the Harvard z list was about, but they are big believers in gap years. I know as far back as 2007 the acceptance letter suggest kids seriously consider one - and point out that student who do take time off generally have better GPAs than those who don’t.</p>
<p>Still, while it might not matter if the student enrols at a community college, if the student enrols at a four year school s/he may not bother to integrate into the school knowing that it is only for one year. Also, other students there may not befriend him/her if s/he makes it known that the school is just a way station on the way to BU.</p>
I doubt it. What would a university have to gain by sugar-coating a rejection? If they don’t want a student, a rejection is much better for all parties. Even if there is some lingering resentment towards the school, who cares? It’s not like one spurned student can really do anything.</p>
<p>Eh, people go lots of places for a year, or even a semester, and throw themselves into life where they are and make new friends. Everyone who does a semester or year as an exchange student abroad does that. I see no problem with spending a year somewhere and then moving on. A year’s a long time.</p>
<p>The real issue is this is a way to game USNews rankings. Usually, these students have lower stats than their classmates. If they start BU as sophomore transfer students, their SAT and high school rankings won’t affect BU’s ranking.</p>
<p>It also affects retention stats and graduation rates. Some of these students won’t be able to pull off the 3.0. If they had enrolled in BU and flunked out, they would count in BU’s stats. If they flunk out of other colleges, they won’t.</p>
<p>My son got this offer at Cornell in 2011. They didn’t have to report his test scores in their freshman class, and he got guaranteed admission the next year with a 3.5 GPA at another 4-year university (no community college allowed). Win-win? Hardly. Guess what happened? He loved his second choice so much, he stayed and turned them down. Cornell’s loss. So this can and does backfire.</p>
<p>One U wait listed S, but said that if he stayed on the wait list and wasn’t chosen, he was guaranteed to be able to transfer the next year if he performed well enough (I can’t remember the details) somewhere else in the meantime.</p>
<p>I thought this was somewhat better than a regular wait list, but he had better options elsewhere so didn’t pursue it.</p>
<p>For example, UT Austin tells some students to enroll at another UT campus with guaranteed transfer if they meet a minimum GPA at the other UT campus. And many public universities have transfer guarantee programs for same-state community college students.</p>
<p>There also seems to be an increasing trend of offering admission to start in the spring semester at the school’s choice as a load balancing tool (generally, the fall semester is more heavily enrolled than the spring semester, due to early or late graduates having the odd semester be a fall semester; US News rating cynics may also note that it may get the slightly lower stats spring admits out of the fall stats for US News ratings). However, the usual choices offered to spring admits for the fall are to attend community college, attend a special program on the main campus with limited course selection, or not attend college at all, rather than attend any college for the fall.</p>
<p>In the BU case, a student may find it to be a way to go to BU at 3/4 the price by going to community college for the first year (assuming that BU allows community college for the first year for this guaranteed transfer program).</p>
<p>The year-delay admission is offered only to legacies from what I’ve heard. The son of a friend turned down Amherst to spend a year studying Spanish (in Spain), then entered Harvard the following fall.</p>
<p>My friend’s daughter had this offer at Texas A&M, I think they even have a community college Blinn (?) that kids go to for a year before going to main campus. Someone from Texas might have the correct information on this.</p>
<p>The Spring or sophomore admit process is a method for schools to keep their freshman enrollment stats high. They only have to report their Fall enrollees, so they place the students with below their average test scores or GPAs in the Spring. I personally think it’s sneaky at best, but I know several kids who have accepted this offer at USC and thrived. So maybe it’s a good thing after all.</p>
<p>Spring admission serves a load balancing purpose, since colleges typically have higher enrollment in the fall, which can result in overcrowding in the fall, or wasted capacity in the spring. It can be advantageous if the student enrolls in community college for the fall term, allowing one to study for and complete the degree at the four year school at about 7/8 the usual cost.</p>
<p>Note that Dartmouth’s D-plan (where students’ off quarters are not necessarily the three summers, and the school says that students should expect at least one of the four fall quarters to be an off term) is another way of addressing the load balancing issue.</p>