Hi everyone —
I’m currently 2 months into my freshman year at UC Berkeley, studying EECS, and I’m considering transferring to another school for various reasons.
Is it even possible to transfer from UC Berkeley to an Ivy League? I’ve heard that the Ivies (and equivalent private schools) usually only take transfers from CC, and even then, it’s incredibly competitive.
Can anyone point me in the direction of another thread/more info on such a transfer?
Thanks in advance!
Possible, yes. Advisable, doubtful.
@Erin’s Dad why is this? Because the opportunity cost is relatively low for the trouble/effort?
My sense is you are a weak xfer candidate. For one thing you don’t seem to be able to articulate a compelling reason to transfer. “The Ivies” include universities the size of Cal, ones more akin to a small LAC, ones located in urban areas (eg. NYC), suburbs, and the middle of nowhere. To give just one aspect of how “an Ivy League” schools differ. Anyone who works in college admissions realizes that such disparate colleges can’t all be a good fit for the same kid. The one thing they have in common is prestige. Unfortunately colleges don’t see applicants primarily hoping to boost the prestige of the name on their diploma as particularly strong, doubly so when the name on the diploma otherwise would be Cal.
Your program is about as good as it gets in your field. The Ivy’s are just not that strong. Why, exactly would you want to transfer? For EECS, what would be better?
Do you have any “compelling reasons” to transfer to the Ivies? Anything Ivies offer that Cal lacks?
Free one for you: P R E S T I G E is the wrong answer.
EECS at UCB is very prestigious, probably more prestigious than the engineering programs at the Ivy Leagues.
A career goal of consulting or banking may be a true answer for many Ivy League aspirants, but probably not one that will impress an admissions reader at any of those schools.
I was purposely vague in my initial post, and I sort of expected this reaction. I didn’t want to be specific because I thought it would deter people from viewing the post and responding.
I actually only want to apply to transfer to UPenn Wharton. @ucbalumnus is somewhat correct — I am interested in business, but not really iBanking or consulting…more so in fintech, financial algorithms, private equity, etc. This was a very recent development. So I thought: Berkeley has Haas school of business, and I’m in EECS… why not double-major? Unfortunately, for engineers, the requirement barriers here are nearly impossible to do this, and there’s no minor either. In fact, taking three technicals each semester, I will barely graduate in 4 years!!
Penn has their “One university” policy, so I could double-dip in business at Wharton, and carry my credits in engineering over to continue learning computer science.
My passion really is in business. Since getting to UC Berkeley, I’ve launched multiple successful businesses of my own, started a large club, etc. I did engineering stuff in hs, but I am changed now. Nothing I have done at Berkeley has been remotely related to the field of engineering (i.e. coding projects, doing robotics, etc.) I’m actually good at engineering, just not innately interested in it I guess.
But truly — it’s basically impossible to transfer to Penn Wharton right?
@SirPingPong Yes, transferring into Wharton is next to impossible. It’s even hard for students who are already at Penn.
@gearsstudio Where do you think people get the “15-20 people each year” figures? There’s no data anywhere so even though I don’t doubt it’s insanely hard, where is the evidence that’s no anecdotal?
If you want to go quant finance, the undergraduate business majors (at either UCB or UPenn) are probably not mathematical enough.
You may want to stay in EECS and use your breadth and free electives to take quantitative economics (e.g. 101A, C103, 104, 138) and related courses. Or consider L&S CS (perhaps more elective space), applied math, statistics, IEOR, or ORMS.
According to the Common Data set, http://www.upenn.edu/ir/Common%20Data%20Set/UPenn%20Common%20Data%20Set%202014-15.pdf, last year Penn had 2453 transfer applicants and accepted 212. That’s for the entire University.
@blprof Yes but that’s for the entire university. There’s no data on the subschools of Penn, such as Wharton. People can only speculate its selectivity.
@ucbalumnus You’re definitely right about that, the main problem is that in EECS there’s just so many technicals and my free electives have to satisfy certain requirements and none of those courses qualify for those. Since they wouldn’t be satisfying anything, it’s hard to add them to my already quite rigorous schedule, at least in lower div. L&S CS is an option…but then I’d lose priority class registration for all my CS classes, not to mention I wouldn’t be declared as I am now and would need a 3.5 to declare.
EECS actually has fewer requirements than other CoE majors. The minimum requirements are 30 units of math and science, and 45 units of engineering for a total of 75 units out of 120 needed to graduate. Six H/SS breadth courses would probably be about 24 units (economics courses can count toward those other than English composition), leaving a total of 21 units of free electives. And if your came in with useful AP credit (e.g. calculus), then you would have even more free electives in place of required courses covered by the AP credit.
It is the case that the frosh/soph years of EECS are heavier in required courses than the junior/senior years, which have mainly electives (in-major, breadth, and free).