<p>I'm a HS senior and I was rejected from my dream school, Yale. I did get into Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Georgetown SFS, but I want to transfer after my freshmen year. I know that the transfer admit rate for Yale is extremely low (4-6%)... so what should I do to improve my chances???</p>
<p>Chances are after a year at anyone of those schools, you'll have made friends, taken classes you like, become devoted to your school (esp. at Dartmouth, where school spirit is huge. Can't speak for the other three), and won't want to transfer anymore. Don't go in planning on it, or you probably wont get as much out of your freshman year as you could.</p>
<p>Work hard during the year and get good grades. If you do decide to transfer, it will help, and if you don't, it's still important.</p>
<p>oh, felix. YOU ARE SO LUCKY!! Look at your options!</p>
<p>Go to Brown. If you loved Yale, you'll love Brown. It's sort of Yalish, but cozier. Providence is a great college town - better than New Haven.
I have a daughter at Yale and I know it's an amazing place, but Brown is just as wonderful, but different. Go and embrace it. This time next year you'll be so engaged with your new life you won't even think of transfering.</p>
<p>This is one of those posts that makes me wish students weren't allowed to post in the Parents Forum.</p>
<p>My advice would be to give your mom and your dad great big hugs and a few kisses, thank them for all they've done to help get you where you are today, and promise to pay it back by doing as well by your own kids when the time comes.</p>
<p>Mini-
I didn't mean to sound like a spoiled brat. The thing is, my parents aren't too thrilled w/ my college choices- I am a first-generation U.S. college student, so, to them, the only colleges worth getting excited about are HYPS... they are encouraging me to transfer. I feel like I am letting them and myself down by not getting into HYP, so I want to try to fix that by doing well in college and transferring. I posted in the parents forum b/c parents (of course) give the best advice.</p>
<p>Then I think you should do just the opposite. Show them that you are happy and thriving at the college of your choice, and which you are privileged to attend, and allow them and you, to move on. Don't even consider transferring.</p>
<p>That's my best advice. Deliberately and forthrightly refuse to pursue it, and instead make the very best of your four years at one of the nation's finest universities.</p>
<p>(P.S. I'd take Brown over Yale any day, but the point is you don't have that choice, and that's just the way it is.)</p>
<p>Kill your parents. Most juries would let you off as justifiable homicide.--Just Kidding, I think.</p>
<p>I'm turning Yale down for Dartmouth with no hesitation. Are you Asian? Many of my Asian friends have this issue. Dartmouth is much more fun, go and you won't want to leave.</p>
<p>Great schools, luxury of incredible choices. Forget the HYP dream and have a great college time. Educate your parents. Like suze, many have turned down HYP and gone to the school that they consider the better fit for them academically, socially, and psychologically.</p>
<p>Get involved in your school, get involved in your academic work, and you'll forget Yale.</p>
<p>I know someone who came from humble beginnings who turned down Harvard for Amherst. He felt Harvard was not the right school for him. Parents got in line. Had a wonderful time at Amherst and feels a very strong attachment to the school.</p>
<p>Check out this Swarthmore video, click on Emilio from El Paso Texas.</p>
<p>No matter what you do you may never get into Yale. If this is the only way you feel that you can please your parents, then you may never please them either.</p>
<p>Both of these are outside your control, in other words.</p>
<p>Here is what is inside your control. Selecting one of the very fabulous options to you...and learning to please yourself.</p>
<p>felix:</p>
<p>I hope this doesn't sound too mean, but I would recommend that you accept your first choice college and then notify them that you are taking a year off before enrolling. </p>
<p>Get a job for a year until you are ready to go to college with a positive outlook. It is a total waste to go to one of the world-class schools where you've been accepted with an attitude that you already hate it or that it's not good enough for you and your family. If you go to college with that attitude, you will hate it and that is a waste of the opportunity of a lifetime (as well as $40,000 a year out of somebody's pocket).</p>
<p>Yale doesn't sound like YOUR dream school. It sounds like your parents' dream school. And, frankly, though interesteddad has a terrific suggestion for you, I suspect your parents would have a fit. My question to you and to your parents: If you didn't want to go to Brown, why in heavens name did you apply? If HYP were the only schools to which you would go, why did you apply anywhere else? You and your parents need to look at this very carefully. </p>
<p>Honestly, transfers into HYP schools are rare and restricted to very specific reasons, and one of them is NOT being denied in the regular admissions cycle. I'd recommend you either 1) take a year off (defer at Brown so as not to lose this acceptance) OR 2) go to Brown and tell your parents you'll apply to HYP for grad/professional school.</p>
<p>While I completely want to echo what the other parents have said (plus, since my daughter was heartsick her entire senior year at Brown at the prospect of ever having to leave, that's the school I think you should pick!), what worries me is that you have already closed your mind to the choices you have. That, unfortunately, can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. While you may be feeling sorry for yourself that you didn't get into your first choice school, what is really heartbreakingly sad is that the perspective that your parents have given you will keep you from embracing what may be the most wonderful opportunity you'll ever have.</p>
<p>Its not as if I hate the idea of going to Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, or Georgetown. When I was applying to these schools, I felt they were good match-reach schools. Yale was my dream reach-reach-reach school. Trust me, Yale is just as much my dream as my parents' dream. They are content with the schools I have been accepted to, but still a bit disappointed... no one wants their child to receive multiple rejections from HYPS. Its just that there are major pros/cons for each school, whereas when I visited Yale I loved every single aspect about it. I wanted to take a gap year, but there's absolutely no way that my parents will allow me to take one. I am visiting Brown in April (I didn't have time to visit it during the summer)... hopefully I will love it. :-)</p>
<p>Bring your parents to the visits. Recently I spent several days at Yale. What is striking compared to Brown and Dartmouth are the security issues. My sister is a freshman, and the concerns she and her friends have are totally absent at Dartmouth and mostly absent at Brown. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer not to spend 4 years looking over my shoulder at night. As for classes, I find the classes at all three to be of similar size (small) and calibre. What is most exceptional to me is Dartmouth's D plan (go to school when you want and get internships when others are not available) and Brown's lack of requirements. Yale, well, leaves me wondering what's special other than the myth.</p>
<p>mini:
Good advice. :)</p>
<p>yale is NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to transfer into, just for your information. Look at the numbers.</p>
<p>Just a thought.</p>
<p>^^ Which is the whole point of this thread... what advice can you knowledgeable, college-saavy parents give me about how to better my already slim chances of transferring to Yale?</p>
<p>Win Olympic Gold. It got Eric Hyden into Stanford as a transfer. Otherwise just do you best and don't worry about it-not much you can really do.</p>