Hey guys! So, to start things off, I totally bombed my four years of high school. I had an awful GPA and did not take SATs. I completed my first year at a CUNY school (College of Staten Island) earning a 3.85 GPA my first semester, and a 4.0 my second semester (my cumulative GPA is a 3.93) and I have a total of 30 credits for my first year. I discovered a passion for studying Mathematics and declared my major as Mathematics, possibly also having an interest in Computer Science. I was even considering Baruch College for their Actuarial Science major. Do I have a good chance of transferring to any other good schools for my major despite my high school records? I’m just looking for some opinions and advice, maybe other experiences as well.
Thank you!
First of all, IMHO a combination of mathematics and computer science is a very good combination. Also, congratulations on your very significant improvement now that you are at university. This is really going to help you down the road particularly if you keep up the good work.
If you attempt to transfer now, do you know where you would want to transfer to? Really top schools such as MIT and Stanford are very difficult to transfer into. Transferring after two years (meaning that you apply with grades from three semesters) will be much more likely to succeed for you since three semesters of university grades makes your high school grades relatively less important. If you had tried to transfer after only one year, you would have been applying with only one semester of university grades and your high school grades would have mattered quite a bit.
One thing to think about long term: If you at some point want to do a master’s degree, whether before or after working for a year or two or three, your high school grades will not matter at all. If you do very well as an undergrad, and if you do well on any subsequent jobs in a related industry, then you will have a good chance at admission to very strong schools for a masters.
@DadTwoGirls , thank you for taking the time to respond. I guess I was more curious about when high school grades become less relevant if transferring to another college, so your advice is certainly helpful. I’m thinking of transferring to another CUNY, for now, such as Baruch College, since I don’t think my high school grades would allow me to transfer to top schools such as MIT or Stanford for Mathematics/Computer Science. I’m not sure which school would be suitable for right now. I’m confident in what I’d love to study, I’ll just have to look into schools that would be possible to transfer into after two years, considering what you’ve mentioned. Hopefully, that will give me better chances.
You are right about having a long-term plan for a master’s degree from top schools. That has definitely been a thought of mine for the future.