<p>Lately I haven't been able to make up my mind about whether or not I should transfer. I have the option of staying at my current public school (which I hate, will get to that in a sec) and graduating a year early with little to no debt. Or, I could transfer as a junior to a top (or respectable) private/public school. I keep going back and forth, but I can't make up my mind. I feel a bit embarrassed admitting it but I have actually been really depressed/listless for a couple of semesters. The idea of graduating from my current school only exacerbates those feelings.</p>
<p>My ultimate goal is grad school. It would make sense to get a BA for cheap and a year early. That still doesn't make me like my school any bit more. On the other hand, I wouldn't have been able to get in to any of the schools I'm hoping to transfer to out of high school and am not really interested in retaking the SAT/ACT (especially with the LSAT lurking around the corner). So my chances aren't as great as a lot of the people I see on here, with outstanding grades/ECs. Those people still get rejected from schools, too.</p>
<p>So, do I suck it up and stay at my poorly ranked public and commute from home or try to transfer up? I'm going nuts, I swear >.<</p>
<p>If you transfer up, will you get yourself in a lot of debt? If so, then I would say to just stay where you’re at and graduate early.</p>
<p>Money is an issue. Having said that, I won’t be applying to schools like Brown or NYU. I’d stick to schools that are need-blind/meet full need for transfers.</p>
<p>^That’s fine, but does your family qualify for significant FA? You also have to be careful of schools that meet full need but use loans as part of their FA package. Finally, if you’re thinking of OOS publics, only a couple offer decent FA to OOS students.</p>
<p>I would qualify for significant FA, yes. I am not completely debt averse, but again I’ll be avoiding the Browns and NYUs. As far as publics go I’m really interested in UVA. I’m not entirely sure if residency is still a huge factor in transfer admissions there, the transfer blog sort of made it seem like that was the case.</p>
<p>Might as well list some of the schools I was considering:
Cornell (specific contract school)
Penn
UVA
Emory
Vanderbilt
UNC-CH</p>
<p>Feel free to slap me back in to reality/suggest schools.</p>
<p>may as well add USC[ Southern CAlif, USNWR # 25] to your list as they have very generous FA for transfers AND they accept over 1000 transfer students each year! Take a look at the USC forums- dreamedupsidedown is a new transfer student who came in with a fabulous FA package.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-southern-california/1199843-ask-me-anything.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-southern-california/1199843-ask-me-anything.html</a></p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestion! I’d hope to stay on the east coast and/or not be sweating all year round, though :p.</p>
<p>my dear, in LA, when it is warm[ 80] it is dry! none of your humid, sticky, east coast summer weather to deal with! There are few days when it is 90+. Most of the time it is shorts, t-shirts and flip flop weather.
but suit yourself!</p>
<p>Over 2.5k transfers accepted, out of less than 10k applying, a very high transfer rate! Thanks for the input mpm, I didn’t know they took that many.</p>
<p>And I agree, the dry heat of LA is pleasant compared to the humidity of the east coast/mid-West.</p>
<p>Glad to see you’ve been doing your homework on the OOS publics, you got the 2 :)!</p>
<p>Thanks! I’m actually thinking of dropping Penn and Cornell. I think UVA, UNC-CH, and Vandy are a bit more realistic. According to the UNC website the average junior transfer GPA is 3.12 or so and I’m way past that, so I think I’d have a good shot. Vandy has a 40% transfer rate, too.</p>
<p>Anyway, thanks for the replies! I’m encouraged to apply around and see what happens, worst case scenario I’ll get a free BA. If anyone has any other words of wisdom for those schools feel free to add on. I’ll go look through old applicant threads to get a better idea.</p>
<p>Don’t transfer. Trust me, grad schools could care less which undergrad school you went to. once you graduate grad school, do you think people will be like “OH nice you went to blah blah blah grad school, but ohh you only went to random crappy state school for undergrad?” they don’t care seriously. its about the last school you went to, not the first.</p>
<p>PerfectSky: I know exactly what you mean, and thats why I was struggling with the decision so much. It would make more sense to stay, but I’m really miserable here. Law schools don’t care about prestige (although some would argue Yale/Stanford are a bit snooty), mostly LSAT/GPA.</p>
<p>Who knows, maybe I’ll end up staying. I just started the thread to get some other opinions on this, since most people I talk to have no experience with this kind of thing (even my guidance counselors, who don’t know what the Common App is).</p>