Harvard Transfer?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>The real question is in the final paragraph, the other paragraphs are to provide background information. </p>

<p>As many other dedicated and intelligent students, my dream is to go to Harvard. However, this is one small “obstacle” that is in my way: rejection. Just like 40,000 other, probably well-qualified applicants, I heard the bad news on “Ivy Day” and was crushed by the response. </p>

<p>I asked myself every night for the past night questions like, “What happened?” and “Where did I go wrong in my application?” Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know what more I could have done to get into Harvard. I roughly had a 3.82 GPA which included plenty of rigorous and Advanced Placement courses, involved in many different clubs and activities holding various positions such as the school newspaper, mock trial team, varsity swim team, quiz bowl, student council, and Spanish club. I was also a peer-tutor for international students (from South Korea and China) and struggling students in the areas of Math, Science, and English. I totally immersed myself in my community making sure that I accomplished at least 85+ hours of service each year helping those in need through various drives and volunteering at the local senior center. I even set up different scholarships and opportunities within my school for those families who are underprivileged and cannot afford to attend a private high school. In the summer, I work three jobs, five days a week, and have been promoted each year due to my work ethic. Through my years in high school, my good attitude and morals have earned me the utmost respect from all my teachers.</p>

<p>Now, I’m not trying to brag, but I would say that my resume was impressive. I go to a small, private, Catholic high school in Massachusetts that basically only has one spot for an Ivy League school. While it’s no Exeter or Andover Academy, it is very rigorous and distinguished. Everyone who reviewed it for me said the same thing. Even Harvard loved it. I got a phone call a few weeks after I applied and told me that they wanted an alumni to meet me at the Harvard Coop (the bookstore across the street) for an interview. I was ecstatic, my friends and family felt the same way. The interview went very well, and he was very impressed with what I had to offer. That same day I took a tour of the school and met with the financial aid office where we learned about the 10% plan. Because my family doesn’t make a substantial amount of money, this financial plan was like music to my parent’s ears, and I knew that I wouldn’t have to burden them with an outrageous bill at the end of four years. We then met with a woman at the admissions office in Radcliffe yard who encouraged me to participate in the overnight stay program. I fell in love with the school as soon as I stepped foot in the yard. The opportunities, students, courses, resources (and even the food!), are all remarkable. </p>

<p>So, what could go wrong, right? Well, everything went wrong. I guess I dreamt too big and lost my head. I got the rejection letter and didn’t know what to do. I was lost. There were only a few options left, but I wasn’t too crazy about them. I narrowed my decision down to Boston University and Emmanuel College in Boston. At first choice, you would have to pick BU, but I barely received any financial aid and it would be almost impossible for my parents to financially support me. I received a full-boat to Emmanuel which made it an automatic option. While my physical being is going to be at one of these two places this fall, my heart is in the yard and will do anything to transfer. </p>

<p>Basically, I was wondering if anyone had any advice or guidance for me (or any other aspiring potential Harvard transfer student) on how to increase my chances of acceptance. I know the chances are in the 1%-2.5% range depending on the year, but I don’t want to hear that. I’m trying to keep my positive attitude and dedicated work ethic. I’m competing with the best in the world for only a few spots, many of whom have outstanding resumes. I need something that can help me stand out to my admissions councilor at Harvard and make them say, “This kid belongs here.” However, will Harvard overlook my application completely if I go to a particular school for financial reasons? I know that I can do the work and have academic success, but we can’t afford it. Thank you for reading this and thank you for your time.</p>

2

<p>You might want to private message Hanna: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1431483-anyone-successfully-transferred-into-harvard.html?highlight=transfer[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1431483-anyone-successfully-transferred-into-harvard.html?highlight=transfer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>“I know the chances are in the 1%-2.5% range depending on the year, but I don’t want to hear that.”</p>

<p>You have to.</p>

<p>The positive outlook you need is a positive outlook toward making straight A’s at Emmanuel and becoming a campus leader. Then, and only then, can you give any thought to transferring. It is pretty hard to make straight A’s under any circumstances, but it will be nearly impossible if your heart is not where your body is. When Harvard admits transfers, it wants people who have poured every effort into their first campuses. It wants people who get transfer recommendations from professors at the first campus who say, “I’m heartbroken that xxjp might be leaving Emmanuel; it’s such a joy to be in class with this kind of student.” Go to Emmanuel and be a joy to your professors, your roommate, and everyone else.</p>

<p>Harvard won’t “overlook your application completely” unless you go to a school that’s unaccredited or you’re in a program (like accounting) where the courses don’t transfer. But you will need darn close to a 4.0 in the most rigorous program available and outstanding leadership to have a shot. The good news is, if you can manage that, even if Harvard doesn’t take you, you’ll be well positioned to transfer someplace like Penn, Cornell, Northwestern, etc.</p>

4

<p>I know the odds and the countless hours of hard work that must completed in order to even become considered for admittance, I just feel as though that’s not enough. Hanna, you seem to be very familiar with this scenario. I’m not sure of your background, but you are obviously very well-educated and thoroughly informed of this lengthy process. What are they really looking for? I know about the general good grades, extra curriculars, and letters of recommendation. But to try and make myself stand out, I have taken on various leadership roles within my school and community, set up new clubs and proposals for new ideas for after school programs, and started various funds and scholarships to help others. What more can I do? I know the odds weren’t in my favor (or anyone elses) before, but now, there is even less of a chance to get into my dream school. What can I do to basically “wow” Harvard?</p>

5

<p>This is really important: Let go of Harvard. You sound like a wonderful person, and Harvard was your dream school, but Harvard is the dream school of thousands and thousands of wonderful kids every year, and only about 1,600 of them actually get to go there. (And for some of them, it wasn’t even their dream school. Life isn’t fair.)</p>

<p>Transferring in has way more to do with luck than with any merit. And your chances will be far less than the gross numbers imply. I’m not certain what things have been like since Harvard re-instituted transfers a few years ago, but in the past a large percentage of its transfers belonged to categories that won’t apply to you: athletic recruits, people who were accepted at Harvard before and went elsewhere (usually other Ivies or Stanford), people coming from Deep Springs (a special two-year college whose admission standards are not unlike Harvard’s). Some transfers (like Hanna, once upon a time) are accepted who aren’t from those groups, but few of them had previously applied to Harvard and were rejected. I can’t say that Harvard has NEVER accepted a non-athlete like that as a transfer, but the odds can’t be much better than winning Powerball.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, you have done a great thing by getting a great scholarship at Emmanuel, and you have it in your power to turn Emmanuel into Harvard for you. Find the best teachers – and there will be great ones there, academics would kill to be in the Boston area – and get everything you can out of them. Continue to be a leader – thank Emmanuel for having faith in you and recognizing what you have to contribute by making it an even better place. I promise if you do that, you will graduate with all the opportunities of a Harvard graduate, and you won’t regret for a moment having gone to Emmanuel.</p>

<p>Sixty-five years ago, my mother broke my grandmother’s heart by turning down Radcliffe to accept a full scholarship at Mills, a small women’s college in Oakland CA, thousands of miles from home (which was part of the point for my mother). My grandmother hadn’t even known she had applied to Mills. Choosing Mills over Radcliffe seemed only slightly less crazy then than it would today. But when it was all over my mother had a fellowship to study at Oxford, and she was one of the first women to attend Harvard Law School. She adored Mills, she made lifetime friends there, and she could not possibly have had a better experience if she had gone to Radcliffe instead.</p>

<p>If you orient your life to trying to get into Harvard, you are pretty much guaranteeing failure and unhappiness. Instead, orient your life to make yourself the very best, smartest, most effective person you can, and watch how the world opens up for you.</p>

6

<p>I do not think I can just simply “let go” even though I would most certainty like to. I have worked hard for four years to get in and none of it mattered. Maybe it isn’t Harvard, but, I want to be at a school surrounded by students just like me: driven, motivated, involved, eager, and willing to learn. When I visited Emmanuel, it seemed as though they were more focused on what they would be drinking that night than their research papers. I don’t know what more I can do and I just want to know what would give me the best possible chance to have another legitimate at Harvard (or comparable school).</p>

7

<p>Rejection isn’t easy for anyone, especially when it feels like you did everything in your power to stack the odds in your favor. I’m sorry Harvard didn’t work out for you…put I have to wonder why there were “only a few options” available to you after Harvard didn’t work out? There are so so many amazing schools out there…especially for someone with your great stats and apparent talents…and certainly a wide range of options that might not be Harvard but definately better than a school that didn’t seem to impress you when you visited?</p>

8

<p>You have been given extraordinary advice by both Hanna and JHS. If you read this year’s Harvard transfer thread you will have seen that Harvard accepted, I believe, 12 students. Twelve, out of thousands of transfer applicants! What they probably all had in common was a devotion to pursuing and achieving excellence at their original colleges of matriculation, not some idle fantasy of giving those colleges the “heave ho” and heading off to Harvard. The chances of successfully transferring to Harvard are slim to none and, as JHS suggests, if you are unwilling to accept this reality, “you are pretty much guaranteeing failure and unhappiness.”</p>

<p>You need to let go of your Harvard obsession in order to be psychologically freed to pursue excellence at Emmanuel, NOT for the sake of getting into Harvard, but for the sake of pursuing excellence itself. If you cannot do this – and make Emmanuel your Harvard, as JHS wisely advised – your chances of ultimately transferring anywhere will be nil as you will become consumed with an obsession at the expense of mastering your undergraduate environment and exhausting its resources.</p>

<p>For success at Emmanuel you also need to let go of your superiority complex. There are smart, driven, talented students at Emmanuel. But you will never find them if you consider yourself too superior to these students to look for kindred spirits. They are there.</p>

<p>Thousands upon thousands of applicants are rejected from Harvard every year. After some initial disappointment, most get over it and on with life. Not getting into Harvard does not consign one to a life of meager accomplishment, unless one chooses to settle for meager accomplishment. Don’t let Harvard determine your future.</p>

9

<p>Well, I got into schools such as Boston University and Northeastern, but they’re far too expensive. The attraction to the Ivy League and comparable schools were their extremely helpful financial aid packages. I never thought I would be in this scenario but obviously I need to face the truth. I would prefer not to be over at Emmanuel but I honestly don’t know what else can be done at this point.</p>

10

<p>I’m not trying to sound arrogant or pompous in any way. From what I personally witnessed and from what my friends have said that went there, it’s not an ideal learning environment for someone who is solely focused on their studies.</p>

11

<p>What do you guys think about the possibility of a post graduate year? I’ve heard of countless success stories of academically or athletically talented students coming from a preparatory school and entering into a top caliber school. I just wanted to see if anyone actually knew of any particular instances of this occurring.</p>

12

<p>I think you should go to Emmanuel and do your best. And you should stop grasping for straws. You didn’t get into Harvard as a freshman. OK. Thousands of others did not either. However, prolonging high school (this post graduate year) is ludicrous beyond words because you have already been accepted to an excellent college with a FULL SCHOLARSHIP!!!</p>

<p>We have all told you that your best opportunity for a successful transfer, not necessarily to Harvard mind you, will come when you have achieved demonstrable success at the college at which you matriculate. In this case said college is, and should be, Emmanuel. Become exceptional at Emmanuel: top student in academics and in leadership. Only if you become exceptional at Emmanuel will you be a viable and competitive candidate for transfer to an upper tier school.</p>

<p>You need to accept the reality of your situation so that you can successfully matriculate at a college other than Harvard. The college that WANTS you, badly it would seem, is Emmanuel. You have an opportunity to do extraordinary work there if you choose to. If you do become one of Emmanuel’s top students, effectively exhausting its intellectual resources, at that point seriously consider transferring elsewhere, even to a top tier school.</p>

<p>You have been given a great opportunity: the chance for an excellent college education at little cost to your family. Go for it!!!</p>

13

<p>I think that Hanna, JHS, and swingtime have already given you wonderful advice - to let go - to make the best out of the college you can attend this fall.</p>

<p>Regarding to PG at a prep school, I heard that it is mostly useful for athletes to improve their academic records, and for international students to take advanced courses to bridge the gap between different school systems (or to improve English).</p>

<p>You can also check out the thread below for other opinions.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/20975-boarding-school-post-graduate-programs-your-thoughts-independent-study-student.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/20975-boarding-school-post-graduate-programs-your-thoughts-independent-study-student.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

14

<p>@xxjpxx20, be the change you want to see at Emmanuel. Then go to Harvard for grad school! You can’t go wrong with that.</p>

15

<p>So basically give up on what I’ve been working everyday for four years and settle…</p>

16

<p>Nothing that you learn is wasted. If you wanted the knowledge, you presumably got it. If you just wanted Harvard, well…that isn’t what Harvard even wants.</p>

<p>And you don’t need to go to another college. Join Americorps or another program. Get a full-time job for two years (maybe at a school that gives free part-time tuition to full-time employees). Join the military. Then reevaluate. You may have a different idea of “settling” then.</p>

17

<p>There’s no question about it I got a fantastic education and I’m definitely well prepared for college. However, I didn’t sign up for countless extra curriculars, spending long nights studying or doing homework, taking various SAT and ACT prep courses and spending three summers doing an internship to enroll at a school like Emmanuel. There’s nothing wrong with the school and I’m not above it but other students from my school and community are going there too and really don’t care about college. My dream is to go to law school while their dream is anything but school. It just feels as though I spent the last four years striving for the best and working as hard as I possibly could just to get let down in the end while everyone else was partying and giving half the effort and still ended up in the same situation.</p>

18

<p>Who says you cannot go to law school? You are becoming overly defeatist! </p>

<p>Look, 33,000 other applicants were rejected from Harvard, for a variety of reasons. I think where you may have been misled – as are many – is in believing that there is a magic formula for admission. Therefore you are upset that you followed the presumed magic formula and did not achieve the expected result. What you don’t seem to understand is that there IS no formula for getting into Harvard, or into other top-tier schools. These schools are not looking for the formulaic student, if I may be blunt. Following a formula – “countless extra curriculars…long nights studying…prep courses…three summers doing an internship” – does not guarantee admission to the most selective institutions. Did you do these things JUST to get into Harvard? Or did any of these things reveal a passion for anything that you were able to convey, thereby revealing something UNIQUE about you to the admissions committees? If you did everything you listed JUST to get into Harvard – meaning, you followed a “formula” for success – that is why you did not stand out as an applicant. All of those things are the bare minimum requirement to be “on the table.” Successful admits, however, are able to show that spark of passion, of something unique, of promise, that raises their applications about the merely formulaic. That is crucial. For example: did you just become invloved in “countless extra curriculars,” or did you follow and develop and convey a real passion for something specific that stood out in your application and over the arc of your high school career? The number of ECs is MUCH less important than the passions that you follow in those that really and truly matter to you. Again, it is not the amount, it is the passion, the dedication, the gift, the spark, that must be conveyed. </p>

<p>I am not trying to be cruel, but you must come to understand that there was and is no formula for admission to Harvard. It looks for promising, and unique, potential students; students who have forged their own paths WITHOUT concern for whether those paths will lead to Harvard. These successful applicants follow those paths for the sake of the journey, not because it guarantees the destination. Therefore, you could NOT have fulfilled a formula for admission to Harvard because there isn’t one. And you cannot continue to whine about not getting the reward you assumed that your specific efforts would garner you.</p>

<p>You have an opportunity to forge an exciting path at Emmanuel. You can follow that path and let it lead you to great things, or you can continue to look backward and, thus, stagnate. You are in good company. Thirty three thousand others were rejected from Harvard. Thousands of them – and you may be part of this group – as qualified as those who were accepted. They have to move on now. So do you.</p>

19

<p>“For example: did you just become invloved in “countless extra curriculars,” or did you follow and develop and convey a real passion for something specific that stood out in your application and over the arc of your high school career?”</p>

<p>Yeah, that was a red flag for me. If you were doing the extracurriculars to impress Harvard, you had it all backwards.</p>

<p>Damn straight, you settle, at least for now. That’s what adults do. You settle because the alternative is to miss out on the life you actually have.</p>

20

<p>Jeffrey Brenzel, who just stepped down as Dean of Yale Admissions to return to teaching philosophy at Yale, brings a great perspective to the applications process: [Epilogue:</a> After Colleges Accept You | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/after-colleges-accept-you]Epilogue:”>After Colleges Accept You | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions)</p>

<p>“After years of experience, however, here is what I know, virtually to the point of certainty: almost nothing depends on exactly which strong college admits you. Everything depends on what you decide to do once you get to a strong college, and how well prepared you are to take advantage of the infinite opportunities you will find there.”</p>

<p>Opportunity awaits you at Emmanuel – don’t pass it by. Best of luck to you!</p>