<p>Hi! :) I'm a junior right now and am trying to decide where to apply next year. I have strong stats, but not amazing. There are some Ivies I'm interested in (HYP, plus Brown and Dartmouth) and I think I have a pretty good chance at Brown and Dartmouth with the stats I already have, but HYP would all be reaches. I'm also playing around with the idea of doing one year of CC to save some money and then trying to transfer to one of these schools, among others. So is it harder to get in as a freshman or as a transfer? Or equal? Thanks for any info. God bless! :D</p>
<p>P does not take transfers. Admissions rates for the rest are lower for transfers; go to the CB College Search, Admissions, they give admissions rates for both fr and transfer applicants.</p>
<p>Oh, well, I mean stats-wise. Are transfers expected to have 2300+ SATs just like freshman applicants? Or could a great college GPA balance out a less-than-perfect SAT score? :)</p>
<p>Harvard freshman admission rate 6%, transfer admissison rate, under 3%. </p>
<p>Yes, they will still look at your SATs. You would need someting amazing, beyond a great college GPA, to catch their (HYP) attention as a transfer applicant</p>
<p>I can’t imagine you would have any chance to transfer into one of these schools from community college unless you were admitted from high school and had a compelling reason to matriculate to CC but wanted to later transfer (ie. your mother was dying and you couldn’t leave her). As others have said, transfer admission rates are lower than freshman acceptance rates. I hate to rain on your parade but no one has a “pretty good chance at Brown and Dartmouth” with strong but not amazing stats.</p>
<p>^Depends on what you consider “strong but not amazing stats”. As for the SAT, I have friends that consider 2100+ to be amazing, but I only call 2300+ to be “amazing”. There are plenty of people that have gotten into Brown and Dartmouth with 2100 - 2290 SATs though, so yes, I do have a pretty good chance.</p>
<p>I think you’re being overly optimistic, SharedPlanet. Even though there surely are students at those colleges with those SATs, those students are vastly outnumbered by the applicants with similar scores who were rejected.</p>
<p>Do you have a chance? Sure. Do you have “a pretty good shot”? I suppose that all depends on how you define “pretty good.” I don’t think anybody but Olympic rowers or people with their family name on a building really has “a pretty good shot” at either of those colleges.</p>
<p>These schools reject 9 out of 10 people. Unless you have cured cancer, you do not have a good chance. It’s a lottery due to all of the qualified people who apply.</p>
<p>I also have a great GPA and extracurricular activities I’ve been dedicated to for over 10 years, so I’ll continue being optimistic. :)</p>
<p>It’s OK to be optimistic but you should be realistic as well. Spend much of your college search identifying safety and match schools you would love to attend in case your optimism proves unfounded. Thinking you will transfer into the Ivy’s from community college, even if you are student president with straight A’s, is unrealistic.</p>
<p>Those schools you mention have amongst the best need based financial aid. If you think you will need to consider a community college because you can’t fund what would be your expected EFC based on a financial aid calculator, then you need to look at “financial safety” schools as well that might give a strong student like yourself merit dollars. Now is the time to sit down with your parents with the 2010 tax returns and run financial aid estimates to see where you stand. By way of example, if your parents make $200K/year but say they will only fund you $20k/year, you are wasting your time applying to the Ivy’s which as a rule don’t give non need-based aid. Drop down a notch or two and there are some great schools that will take an Ivy caliber applicant and give them the support to allow matriculation with only that $20K parental contribution.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. 
Luckily, since I live in California, I have all the UC schools as my financial safety options 
(even though they aren’t super cheap either, but they’re at least less expensive than private schools). I also have a good chance at getting the Regent’s Scholarship at several of the UC schools. </p>
<p>So if I were to go to a UC school (let’s say UC Berkeley or UCLA since they are the most prestigious) for one year and got a great GPA there, would that increase my chances of transferring to a higher caliber private school?</p>
<p>“would that increase my chances of transferring to a higher caliber private school?”</p>
<p>Harvard has ~3% admission. An increased chance is what? 3.2% chance?</p>
<p>Sharedplanet - Advice from a Calif parent…there is much more financial support from a private school than a California UC or state college if you really want to go. You might find it’s cheaper to go to Harvard than Berkeley (for example) as many of the Ivys have much more money to give.</p>
<p>All Ivy League schools are reaches, with the teensy exception of MAYBE UPenn or Cornell.</p>
<p>Ivy League schools as a group accept very, very few transfers. See if you can get in to your first choices as a freshman, and if you can’t, just go somewhere else good. There are many excellent schools out there.</p>
<p>You need to be an athlete – a really good one. Harvard’s magazine a few years back had a story of a couple of girls that transferred into Harvard from University of Tennessee: they were nationally-ranked swimmers.</p>
<p>They have enough super smart people at the Ivies already. What they look for in transfers is athletic talent, primarily.</p>
<p>Someone said before: Transfer requires a story, not stats.</p>
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<p>AND, not not.</p>