I have no gauge for the courses at Stony Brook though. I have many friends at ivies and through them I have looked at the rigor and content of their CS classes (and other subjects).
I like certain aspects of Rochester, particularly the sports club teams. I’ve bonded with many of the upperclassmen and other freshmen through sports, so it’s not like I hate everything about this school with a passion. However, academics has always been a first for me, and I feel that Rochester is not meeting my needs.
There’s nothing anyone can say about your chances other than that most of those schools take just a handful of transfers per year. You might get in somewhere, you might get shut out completely. Then what? Thus the emphasis on having some apps that aren’t reaches.
@asbdsga , when I see your stats and not being accepted by any ivy, I guessed you are Asian. So it may not be your resume or essay or senior grade, but something that you can’t change.
Rochester is known for pre-med, but not CS. Even RIT has a better CS reputation than UR. But the full tuition merit aid is hard to beat. I doubt you can match that scholarship as a transfer student.
I had a friend with better scores, high school awards (think USAMO multiple times), and college extracurriculars than you apply to ivies for transfer this past year. Out of all the ivies he applied to, he got into Cornell CAS (which has a relatively high acceptance rate for transfers iirc)
Not saying that you are not competitive, but transferring to a selective school is even more difficult than freshman admissions.
“Cornell CAS (which has a relatively high acceptance rate for transfers iirc)”
FWIW: I don’t know about this past year, but generally CAS transfer acceptance rates are similar to its freshman acceptance rates. Which are lower than the transfer acceptance rates reported for the university as a whole, due to relatively high transfer acceptance rates at the contract colleges there. The numbers for the contract colleges are misleading too, since they include students who were admitted subject to articulation agreements with community colleges and those who received conditional deferred admission when they applied as freshman.
Of course “relatively high” depends on relative to what. Cornell CAS freshman admit rate might also be considered “relatively high”, if the pool it is compared to consists solely of the other Ivy League schools.
But anyway, the fact that this “friend with better scores” didn’t get in does not necessarily mean that OP won’t get in. They read and consider the whole application, including essays and recommendations. Assuming the scores are “good enough”, those other factors may be quite important… But it does make sense that if a school is only taking 28 out of 1160 transfer applicants all those factors have to be amazing.
Cornell engineering and Penn SEAS always have places because students are dropping out of them. You should have a decent shot if your grades are good.
The courses will be rigorous, I promise. Maybe more so than you even realize. They are ranked very highly in what matters, salaries and access to top jobs.