First of all, I made extremely bad grades in high school. I graduated with a 2.62 weighted and I took 4 AP classes. In high school I was just immature and wasn’t very driven.
Now, I’m a freshman at a small mid tier university in the deep south. I am taking 16 hours and quite hard classes and I have all A’s. Of course the semester isn’t over yet, but I am already considering transferring.
I have found my passion, economics. I really want to major in economics but I’m afraid this school will not challenge me enough and this school does not have enough prestige for when later in life I’m looking for a job.
Everyone it seems that I really look up to in the economics sector seems to have graduated from an extremely prestigious school (Yale, Harvard, Brown, MIT, etc.)
I would love to go somewhere like that. Actually, maybe not even Ivy League but just someone where I will be surrounded with driven, hard-working kids. My current school really just isn’t like that.
Schools I am considering and hoping i could transfer to with a flawless college GPA, above average test scores, and various student organizations and involvement etc.
Vanderbilt
Any Ivy but that may be a long shot with my poor high school record
MIT
Stanford
University of California Berkley
University of Texas at Austin
Arizona State
Also would take any suggestions.
I’m a white female, in the lower middle class if that changes anything.
Do I have any hope or will my high school record forever be my demise?
Thank you
(Sorry I may be a tad overdramatic)
Your HS record will not follow you perpetually, but is one of the several important factors typically considered for transfer applicants. Other factors, such as achieving a flawless college GPA, as you suggested you are working toward, can be more important, however. For most of the schools you have expressed interest in, your tests scores should not just be above average, but much above.
If you have found your passion in economics, you will most likely want to have the opportunity to interact with faculty who are active scholars. These analyses will list some schools you can look into further (from IDEAS, available online): “US Economics Departments”; “US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges.”
The Ivies and MIT admit very few transfers. First semester midterm grades are good but with your abysmal high school GPA you would need four semesters of good college grades to be able to transfer to a better school.
Get the IVY and IVY equivalent notion out of your head.
Your new attitude is admirable and will definitely help you to overcome rigor of a better school. But at the same time you need to be realistic about both your chances of admittance and your readiness for supper rigrious coursework in those top schools!
For those reasons I suggest you to forgo the schools in top of your list and concentrate more in the bottom two (and schools in that range)!
UCB only takes Junior level transfers (60 semester units) so you would need to wait another year before applying.
Your HS record will have no bearing on your admissions for UCB. Get a great GPA and Good Luck.
Here is what you should know, at least for Ivy schools–the seats at Ivy-plus schools that are available for transfers is largely tied to attrition. Since attrition is almost non-existent in the top Ivy schools, so are the seats available. By way of example, recently, Harvard had over 1500 applicants and admitted about 15, and Yale had over a 1000 applicants in which about 2 dozen were offered seats. Brown is close to 5%.So, while being qualified is certainly a criteria, the other portion must convey why these schools; typical reasons are that these schools offer programs and/or degrees not offered at your existing institution. Transferring because of the desire to attend a more elite institution is NOT consider a valid reason for transfer.
Second, that you could have obtained admission as a freshmen applicant. Third, that you have perfect scores at your current institution. Long story short…it is much more difficult to obtain admission as a transfer than as applying for a freshmen seat…
I get some federal pell grants and I have grandparents that have money and will help me pay for school especially if I’m being ambitious and making good grades.
