How difficult is it to transfer from UC Berkeley into an Ivy?

Transfer Students
1

Hello College Confidential community! Hopefully, you can help me in my stressful time of need :slight_smile:

Would my status as a student at Berkeley aid my admission chances as a transfer into one of the ivies? Or is my college not considered in transfer admissions? Additionally, I was waitlisted at Dartmouth before and they could not admit me because of space limitations; do you think that will impact my admission chances at all this time around? Should I focus on applying to schools that aren’t ivies instead? I’m also looking at schools like Georgetown and Northwestern etc, but those are difficult to get into as transfers as well.

I am a first year student at UC Berkeley, and want to transfer to an ivy (probably Dartmouth, Penn, or Columbia) for several of the following reasons, and so the lower acceptance rates for transfers is disconcerting.
(1) I was originally intending to major in psychology (thus my choosing Berkeley) but now I want to major in international relations/political science and economics. I think I can do better in that field at a different school.
(2) As an out-of-state resident, I had to work harder to get into Berkeley than most of my peers, and I wish that was recognized more.
(3) As a follow-up to the second point, a lot of my peers look down upon Berkeley and this effects my own morale.
(4) Grade deflation at Berkeley is very real and rather disheartening; it would be nice to go to a school where the grade you get is the grade you earned, rather than the grade you get because of a bell curve.
(5) I feel I am more of an East-Coast person and it would be nice to be closer to home.
(6) Paying out-of-state tuition for a public university where I am not completely happy makes me feel guilty.

Please let me know if you have any helpful tips. Thank you!

2

You seem to have one criterion: prestige. The Ivy adcoms will sense that in your application and it will not look good.

3

Who looks down at UCB? Who are these peers?

4

No, the reason you got in was because you were willing to pay OOS rates.
Most families find the OOS rates outrageous, and choose wisely not to send their kids to an overpriced public U.

Grade deflation is commonly known at Berkeley. Did you expect it to change because you worked “harder than your peers”?

Is this serious? Previous posts indicate that you were going into Psych?

Transfers have a hard time getting into the ivies because of attrition; there are no real available seats.

Transfers, who are trying to get into the ivies because they didn’t get in the first go-round (and feel that need to tout how wonderful they are), have even less chances. Oh and their fees are about the same as Berkeley.

5

Sorry, the facts simply do not support the assumption that there is grade deflation at UC Berkeley. Grades have been steadily increasing for decades, just not at the rate of the Ivies or other private institutions. You are getting the grade you deserve. Sorry to burst your bubble.

http://www.dailycal.org/2015/05/15/grade-deflation/

6

According to that article, Berkeley still hands out less A’s than the ivies, so there is an element of grade deflation there. I don’t Berkley grade deflates, they give out grades that students deserve, it’s the ivies that inflate grades (e.g. giving a B to someone who got a 50 on test, where the average was 75, which would be a D or F at Berkeley).

In the real world, you will be compared to your peers, I’ve worked at companies on both coasts and can tell you that everyone is ranked, top to bottom with the top performers getting more money than the average performer. So not everyone is getting As and Bs in real life.

7

Among all the reasons, the 5th one is a better one.

8

Sorry, I guess I wasn’t articulating myself well enough :frowning: Thank you all for your input; I’ll take it into consideration.

9

From your other posts you haven’t even started yet, which may be why you have time to be fretting about this.

Not quite: they waitlisted you b/c, while you were a good candidate, there were candidates that they felt were better for the class that they were building.

As @auntbea noted, the only places that become available for transfer students are from students who leave- which, as you might imagine, is a small number.

Note that all of the tippy tops will be looking for why you want to come there. Harvard is the most explicit, with the first criterion being: “A clearly defined academic need to transfer”, but all of them will apply that metric to some degree. Bluntly, you do not have an academic need: you might feel that you could do IR/PolySci/Econ better at another place, but UCB is simply too strong across the board to be able to credibly claim that you can’t get what you need there. Especially as a first semester student, who has just suddenly change interests, it will be hard to demonstrate why you need to go to their college.

As @auntbea indicated, you actually had a (slightly) easier time, not harder, getting in to UCB: that full pay status helped give you an edge over other well-qualified but less-well funded applicants. And per your other thread you got in off the waitlist, so I wouldn’t be so quick to be disrespectful of your peers, especially before you meet them.

If you don’t have something good lined up to keep you busy this autumn before you start in January, find something!

Or, decide to take a gap year, plan something meaningful to do during the year and reapply as an incoming freshman: your odds are much, much higher of success than as a transfer. In general, it is more successful to apply to new places rather than places that have already rejected you, but if you can add something to the reapplication it could happen. I suspect that you will do better aiming your applications a little more judiciously.

10

^^^ exactly.

Defer enrollment at UCB, take a gap year, and apply to a better thought-through list.

11

One of the OP’s previous threads lists the following results:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1976483-please-chance-this-anxious-senior.html

The thread indicates that the OP had applications outstanding at the time to UCB, NYU, Columbia, Penn, Princeton, Dartmouth.

12

You haven’t started yet? You won’t have grades when applying for transfer. And it doesn’t sound like you’re doing anything extraordinary since June.

Waitlist is the admission result for many reasons. It’s no promise that if a spot opens, nor even implying anything about your application.

No, you can’t transfer at will. No, an admit to UCB won’t sway them.

13

Are you Global Edge or not? In London? Or did something change?

If you’re misunderstanding WL at Dart and thinking you’re just a hair away, it doesn’t work that way. They built their class, as did others.

Wanting to transfer for the reasons you wrote doesn’t show me you understand what it takes or how blazingly tough it is to transfer to an Ivy. The kids they take will be 110% on top of their game- in understanding and in performance in college. That’s more than 2 summer classes, a protest of deflation, friends who affect your morale…

14

OP, apply as a transfer to Dartmouth if that is where you want to be for whatever your own reasons are. Nothing you stated will help you, only a solid GPA at UCB and good essays, otherwise your stuck paying private school rates at a public U.

15

IMHO

I vote for deferring your class and ask for a gap year at UCB, buyers remorse is at work. You should start over again next year. Do some EC enhancements and you should get in Dart or any other school.

BTW, OOS is much easier to get in than CA resident at UCB, get that into your head and don’t complain on that point.

16

It is difficult to transfer to the ivies, but it would be easy to get somewhere back on the east coast if you are more flexible with your college list.

17

If you wanted the smaller size of an elite mid-sized private on the East Coast, why didn’t you choose CMU?

18

@artloversplus That’s not what the stats say (SAT and GPA), they are significantly higher for OOS students.

19

Sorry everyone! I feel really badly and I think I wasn’t able to articulate myself well. I came off snobby and problematic so I’m sorry for that. Thank you all for your input. I have talked to my parents a lot about these issues before coming onto College Confidential; I just wanted CC’s input, which I have received loud and clear haha :,)

20

Sometimes only strangers will be honest with you.