<p>Is it reasonable to go to a state school for the first two years and then transfer to an ivy league school in order to save money?</p>
<p>It is not a reasonable plan in my opinion. It is extremely hard to transfer into an Ivy (even much harder than getting in as a freshman).</p>
<p>It’s nearly impossible to get into the Ivies as a transfer student; only a handful succeed each year – many from other similarly-rank schools. Many of your credits might not count, either.</p>
<p>Your best bet would be to apply for admission as a freshman. It is a rarity that students get accepted as a transfer.</p>
<p>Depending on your family’s finances, spending two years at a state school could be more expensive than spending it at an Ivy. Financial aid policies at some Ivys can be very generous.</p>
<p>I remember the Yale admissions guy telling us that they accept about 6-10 transfer students a year.</p>
<p>Besides, aren’t most (if not all) Ivies need-blind?</p>
<p>Number of transfer students that applied for the fall 2010 semester at Princeton = 0</p>
<p>One option - go to a good (non-Ivy) school for four years and do grad school work at an Ivy afterwards. That degree will look plenty good.</p>
<p>agrre - most often in life you are judged on the last educational institution you attended. So, go to state school and do as well as you possibly can and apply to the best graduate program in your area of interest.</p>
<p>Look at the transfer acceptance rates of ivy league schools and check it out versus the regular accept rate and you’ll have your answer. Some schools such as Cornell may have a favorable rate whereas with others, the odds are not good at all.</p>
<p>I am a student at Bryn Mawr. Three students in my class (of less than 400) transferred to Brown after their first year. Two other students got accepted to Penn, but neither received sufficient financial aid to attend. It’s definitely possible to transfer to an Ivy but I wouldn’t count on it.</p>
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<p>This simply means that when they are considering your admissions they do not consider your financial need. </p>
<p>I agree with the above posters. Ivy tranfers are not very plentiful. I believe Princeton does not accept ANY transfer students.</p>
<p>There are some years where no transfer students are allowed at any specific Ivy League school. If you can get in as a freshman and the financial aid works for you, you should take the spot.</p>
<p>I agree with rmac399 and drdom. If you plan on going to graduate school, you should go to the best undergrad school without breaking the bank. Then go to a top notch graduate school.</p>
<p>It’s not a good plan. Like people said, transfer admissions is extremely tough. The only ivy that I heard that may be easier to transfer into than matriculating as a freshman may be Cornell. This is secondhand, but there was a poster who said it wasn’t that hard to get in. However, he ended up getting a 3.95 or something in engineering at Cornell so I don’t know if his perspective is skewed since his grades at the state school were likely perfect. Still, he said the other transfer students weren’t impressive so maybe transfer admissions isn’t that tough.</p>
<p>75% of Cornell’s transfer students are entering the contract colleges there. The contract colleges, and the hotel school, are relatively transfer friendly. Though the published numbers are misleading, because many of these transfer students were offered guaranteed transfers during the freshman admissions process. The engineering, architecture, and arts & sciences colleges are tougher. Engineering and architecture admitted 10-12% of transfers last year, CAS admitted under 8%. </p>
<p>The thing is, if you enter a particular college there you have to fulfill the course and major requirements of that college, so hopefully you are going there because that’'s what you want to study.</p>
<p>The comment “may be easier to transfer into than matriculating as a freshman” can apply to virtually every transfer situation. Few people willingly transfer to a less selective/prestigious college than they are currently attending, unless they are doing poorly. So there is often a presumption that these individuals did not/ could not get into that school they are ultimately transferring to out of high school, or else they would have done so in the first place.</p>