I am in 11th grade and I have changed schools every year (due to parents getting job transfers and moving locations). I am planning on changing in senior year as well due to personal reasons. Will colleges view my transfers as a bad thing? What happens if I do change? Will colleges not accept me? Will my rank not count in senior year?
I think it shows perseverance and tenacity, so it might actually be beneficial to your app. Moving schools every single year is not an easy thing to cope with, fam
@nyucorgi Really?!? Thats great! But someone told me that my rank will be “omitted”. I guess I can explain why I have moved a lot in essays.
They will not hold something you have no control over against you.
Some schools will not let you be Val or Sal unless you’ve been there more than a year. I think that’s rare, but it does exist.
My kids went to 3 high schools. It was tough because some classes didn’t transfer so they had to retake them (health, a PE class, and something else). One had to finish a class online. I think it will just take some explaining in your essays if you go to a school that requires essays.
Long-ago Marine brat here. Many moves. Many schools. In 4th grade, I actually went to three schools and four different classrooms (when the last school realized how brilliant I was, of course – please apply humor font to that comment). Three high schools.
Make a positive of it. To this day, I can get along with almost anyone. I can connect with people and make friends quickly – because I had to. I was a small guy. I swear I didn’t intentionally make friends with the biggest kid in the class, but it often turned out that way. 
You may have ranking issues, but that is less significant for colleges than overall GPA & test scores & ECs. Your adaptability is a thing to work with.
@twoinanddone @AboutTheSame Thxx for the info!
The school I’m going to transfer to in senior year is the same school I went to in 10th grade. I will be explaining this in my essays.
Our high school doesn’t provide ranking info as a policy. No Val or Sal. So we could never include that information either. n/a is what we were told to put in that box. This one had a 4.0/4.6w, wished they would have ranked at the time, but it didn’t matter in the end. I think you have a great essay within all those changes and adjustments.
Don’t explain in the essays. Use Addl Info. And the final GC will likely also explain. You can use recommendations from one or more of this year’s teachers, if they’re the right choices, though it might be good to have one from senior year as well.
Lots of hs don’t rank and adcoms do just fine working without that. But OP, some new hs will officially include transcripts from former schools (usually naming them,) sparing you needing to ask for copies from multiple schools. You can ask the current GC how yours works now. Maybe you or a parent can ask the next school, in advance, how they will handle this.
This all is complicated, but adcoms can translate.
Few challenges you will have: 1) normalize your transcript from one school to another, 2) LORs.
My kid transferred her junior year. It took us 6 months to get her transcript translated to her new school. Her new school weighted APs, but not Honors. Her new school offered APs as early as freshman, whereas her old school didn’t. Her old school was more rigorous and their honors were more advanced than some of those APs, but her new school didn’t want to give her credit for honors. Even though her new school didn’t rank, adcoms still wanted to know what quartile she was in and GPA had to be calculated. In my kid’s case it was even more important because she was up for Val.
OP - whereas you are for your senior year, I would get your transcript sorted out before you apply to colleges. It is not always very straight forward.
Students usually ask teachers whom they know the best to write their LORs, and sometimes they’ve had those teachers multiple years. It is going to be more of a challenge for you to find teachers to write strong LORs for you. You don’t have to ask your current school’s teachers, feel free to ask teachers you’ve had at other schools. The challenge would be that those teachers from your previous schools may not want to extend themselves for students who no longer go their school.
You are going have to be more organized and focused than other applicants because your new GC is not going to know you as well. I wouldn’t leave it to your new GC to know what’s best for you.
Thank you. I don’t think I explained myself clearly (sorry my fault), but I am going back to same school I went to in 10th grade, so most people already know me.
The school I am going to change to next year includes all the schools I went to, and the grades I received in each of those schools on my transcript. I already know most of the teachers in that school because I went their in 10th grade (I have to move back to the school). That GC knows me pretty well because I used to interact with her frequently when I was in 10th grade, so getting an LOR from her shouldn’t be a problem.
Just choose your LoR folks wisely. It’s a very custom decision. Some kids will ask an 11th teacher because the rigor picks up then and the course may relate to their major.
You can write about the experience in your main essays, but it’s also fine to use the additional info section for it. You can’t do anything about rank or how your grades get weighted, so I wouldn’t worry overmuch about it. Some students submit a transcript from each school. The biggest issue is letters of recommendation. It’s nearly always best to get a junior year teacher to do them as in the fall there is not really time for senior year teachers to get to know you. The one exception might be a teacher you also had in 10th grade. I’d ask your current teachers if they would be willing to write letters for you and make sure you have their contact info.
My daughter changed schools in 11th grade, and had many of the same issues @oldfort 's daughter did. There’s no question that it hurt her some when she was applying to college. In the end everything worked out, in that she was accepted to some colleges she liked and she had a great experience at the one she chose. She might have gotten one or two more acceptances had she stayed at the old school. Who knows? In retrospect, it didn’t matter. Switching schools (which was not her choice) had some important benefits, too, but helping her college applications wasn’t one of them.
In the OP’s case, it’s clearly helpful that he or she is returning to a school previously attended, so that there is a pre-existing relationship with teachers and the GC.
In my view, you make your choices based on what will give you the best education and help you become the best person. If you do that, little differences in college admissions won’t matter, because little differences in college admissions are far less important than what you learn and how you grow and engage with what you are studying.