Like I said in the title, I am in a unique situation for transferring schools, I withdrew from a college in upstate NY for mental health reasons. Went to my local community college honors program and got really good grades. Applied to UVA for transfer, and got rejected, but realized I have take the fall to gain more credits, and to work on my self.
My Stats are 3.8-3.75 gpa in a NY community college honors program. Crappy act score of 27. Sat subject test US History 750. Bad high schools gpa of 3.0 with some aps (I really struggled with depression and ADD. I have some strong extracurriculars of leadership positions at my schools clubs, a state assembly, and congressional internships. Plenty of work experience. Good recommendations Hours of volunteering on political campaigns and also at a state psychiatric hospital. (I want to help fix the country’s mental health crisis)
Basically I want to go to a good school that I can be proud of, and that I can enjoy my time at. Also a good school for a major in political science.
Please let me know the comments of some good highly ranked schools that accept a good amount of transfers
There are many schools that would be great for a poli sci major. Have you thought of schools located in state capitals where you could work in government related jobs while in school? I don’t think you should be focused solely on “highly ranked schools” with your profile. .
Assuming that you are in-state in New York, I think that your best bet is likely to be one of the SUNY’s. Hopefully someone else can suggest which one would be best (I don’t know the various SUNY campuses well enough to tell them apart).
I agree with you that the US could use some help in terms of how we deal with mental health. This is probably true of many other countries also.
“Basically I want to go to a good school that I can be proud of”
This shouldn’t really be a criteria. You should be proud of any school that meets the latter two criteria and gives enough resources and opps to get you employed or into graduate school afterwards. Education and a good social experience aren’t about getting pat on the back by randoms (or yourself for that matter) for saying “I went to x”. With a political science major, employers probably won’t care either. They’ll want to see skills and experience.
You can maybe try places like VU, Emory, Tufts, and some other privates (as in, maybe wanna avoid out of state publics that are highly selective. They’ll make admissions tough). Look at their Common Data Sets to see if they admit a reasonable amount of transfers. Many do report the transfer stats. Please don’t get caught up in overall USNWR rank. Find a social fit and go look at the “undergraduate” tabs of political science websites to see how robust their academic, EC, and co-curricular offerings are as it signals how well resourced the department is and how much it cares about undergraduates. Don’t assume that it is solid because it exists at a school ranked highly by USNWR, as we know that USNWR isn’t really ranking “academic quality”, especially of individual divisions and departments. Again, you want to be proud of what you did (or what the school helped you do) at whatever school, and satisfied with the level of intellectual training it provided. Many places do this without being but so recognized in USNWR and still have high alumni loyalty, satisfaction, and outcomes.
@CheddarcheeseMN I came from school in albany, and I wasn’t very happy
@bernie12 I guess I just wanna make my academic hardships mean something in the end. Do you think I have a chance in hell at those schools with my stats ?
@Dre51298 : You need to think about this differently. Your “academic hardship”, is only going to be worth it if coupled with internships and other training opportunities regardless of where you go. Going to a certain school will not increase its worth, especially if in political science. I’m sorry, it just won’t. Maybe if you go on to get a law degree or PhD from a great program somewhere (which is not predicated upon where you attended for undergrad. JD programs want solid/high GPA/LSAT. PhD programs want decent/high GPA, decent GRE, and research experience/quantitative skills that help you do serious social sciences research), that can elevate you, but an undergraduate degree in that area…no. This isn’t STEM, where some premium is going to be put on a student graduating rom a selective university with a solid GPA in a STEM subject (hell, even then internships and research are expected).
I’m going to keep it real. Prestige effects seem to only heavily influence specific sectors (think some investment banks) and it also seems that you can’t tease out the effect of the brand versus the caliber of the student. Students who go to these branded schools disproportionately treat their majors and tracks as more than just a degree/checklists of coursework they need to do well in and are well aware that they need experiential opportunities to market themselves to post-grad opps. Because of this, the non-prestige focused sectors may actually hold these students from name brand schools to a higher standard. As in, they know what top applicants from the school look like, and will only choose those because they don’t put much stock in saying: “look we have all these employees from this very prestigious schools”. Their clients just aren’t concerned about that as some mark of credibility. So sometimes going to these elite schools may introduce you to more competition to become a stellar applicant from said school which primarily produces significantly better than average applicants than other places from the get go. Since I agree with what you implied about mental health, you’ll wanna consider how this influences that. I would say, if you go to one of these schools, and want to truly benefit, you really need to “hit the ground running” in a way that indicates that you are not relying on the prestige of the institution.
They’ll kind of just go “that’s nice that you graduated from x, but what have you done?” (in addition, pre-liminary screens of cover letters/resumes are quick and will look for mention of specific experiences or skills that match the job description and not where you graduated). Employers, no matter where you come from, expect experience and skills. You don’t need a renowned school to train you such that you qualify for the “experience” needed to get a job or whatever post-grad opportunity, especially if you are getting a social sciences or humanities degree.
As for your chances of admission, I don’t know. You claim you wanna go to such schools, so you need to just apply. Many of them have high(much higher than freshman) transfer in rates. Some of them are still kind of obsessed with HS stats, and some like my alma mater (Emory) aren’t as much and want to see what you are doing now and like to give opportunities to those who they think can use and will leverage the resources at the U. As in recently, there were cases where they denied several students with high HS and college stats coming from other solidly or top ranked schools. When I attended, I noticed that they did lean towards those from much less selective schools, perhaps because they thought (rightfully so, I believe) those students would be more embracing of the increased academic opportunities/rigor as well as other things, whereas some of the others may have been just looking for a prestige bump of sorts as opposed to a completely different environment.
@bernie12 thanks for writing all this for me, I appreciate it. I just always thought I had to balance out my community college education to seriously be competitive. As far as internships, I am doing pretty well, especially with my congressional internship I am in currently. My thinking also was that if I got to a highly respected school its gonna motivate me more to live up to my potential. Do you which know of which schools are more obsessed with hs stats ? Or where I can find out ?
@Dre51298 : Hint: If it is ranked below 10 and has freshman admit bottom quartile scores above (maybe even significantly) those that are ranked 10 or higher, it is probably obsessed with stats. Use the CDS and admissions website to make a judgement.
And no. Focus on the internships and graduating for at least a decent 4 year university that meets your needs. Do not get caught up in these stupid prestige games. They are vastly over-rated, especially if pursuing certain areas. Only go to an elite university if you really want that environment: Do you want stronger peers (will that motivate you to do better work. Do you want more intellectually driven conversations in and out of class)? Does it offer programs not as common at less wealthy university that you envision yourself taking advantage of? Would you deliberately pursue academically rigorous instruction/academic pathways if you go there? Do you want to take advantage of the research opportunities? If not, then it probably isn’t worth the money. You need to go there and use more than the name, and celebrate how you’ve made it to and through a top school after what you’ve gone through. You need a “how will you help me further enhance myself in a way that most less selective schools can’t” plan. And not all of these enhancements will be as tangible as job or graduate school placement, which can be achieved elsewhere.
*a sidenote: no, much higher than average rigor cannot be assumed to be default pursued at elite universities, however, they are more competitive as I’ll explain. Some schools have students (especially freshmen making the adjustment to college) that basically scream about the rigor from the roof-tops when they are really just taking some “slightly above basic” instructors and courses where the teacher grades them seriously and doesn’t just give out A’s for “decent” work. The fact is, they have never been truly challenged in a class with a bunch of peers competitive and high performing enough to prevent a curve in courses at at least slightly above average rigor. Remember that some AP/IB exams are written like “more rigorous than average” university level exams but they are curved/graded based on performance of a national pool (this pool isn’t select. Remember that schools are ranked on the amount of APs taken, not passed, so it is trendy to have students take the exams, whether they achieved a certain level of mastery or not) of test takers and not a group of elite test takers. You can mess up some and still get a 4 or 5 because as a high achiever, you already test better than most. In a medium (as in a course that requires a reasonable amount of effort even if you are smart and well-prepared. If you’ve taken “easy” college classes by now, you probably know the difference. The latter is like high school level demands with highly specialized content. Elite universities have these “gut” courses too) rigor elite college course, every mid-term may be a shorter version of an exam at the caliber of a tough AP exam and you have less time. In HS, often instructor written midterms are easier than the AP itself,s so most experience AP rigor exams only once (and then they were heavily coached for that if they went to a decent school).
Just like a freshman, as a transfer, you’ll need to be ready for what is ultimately the effect of the increased competition on the grading and how rigorous the courses “feel”. Basically, unless the course assignments and exams (if given), are VERY rigorous (as in far beyond the cognitive demands of a tough AP/IB exam or a more standard college level course in the field), don’t expect to ride a curve at any of these schools. You’ll work for every point. It takes quite the challenge to get course grades to dip enough below departmental norms to warrant a curve at these schools.