Junior Transfer - Can I get into top schools?

Transfer Students
1

Hi everyone! I know the Ivies I list below (except Cornell?) only take 5-10% of transfers and it would be a long shot even if I had a 4.0 and wasn’t applying to transfer my sophomore year, but are any of the schools listed below relatively feasible? Are there any where I truly don’t have a shot in hell and should just save the cash from the ~$90 application fee? Money isn’t really an issue. I’m hoping that the fact that my GPA is only lowered by a single really rough semester will lessen that blow.

About me: white, female, $150,000+ income bracket
4-year Catholic private university, ~70% acceptance rate (both of my parents went there)
College GPA: 3.384
[Semester 1: 3.72, Semester 2: 2.77, Semester 3: 3.57]
Intended Major: Economics
ACT: 34 [E:36, M:34, R:33, S:33] non-superscored

College Involvement:
Sorority Director of Philanthropy
–Raised over $25,000 for our philanthropy
–Social organization, not a service or cultural sorority
Marketing Internship at an engineering firm
–Full-time summer 2015
Business Analytics Internship with an NBA organization
–25 hrs/week both semesters of sophomore year
–heavy Excel work & produce reports for execs
Econ tutor within the business school
**Will try to get involved in a service-oriented organization this upcoming semester

HS GPA: ~3.9 weighted
High School Involvement:
Founder & President of the Debate team, a couple regional/statewide championships
Track Captain, Elite All-State, Academic All-State, 3x state champ, national qualifier, State All-Star team, Coach’s Award
3x weekly tutoring & mentoring underprivileged kids
Took undergrad courses at an Ivy during the summer

Colleges I already applied to: Berkeley, UCLA
Considering applying to: UPenn (dream school), Columbia, Boston U, Dartmouth, Brown, UChicago (was waitlisted in HS), USC, Virginia, Yale, Northwestern, Cornell, USC, Georgetown

Possible hooks:
-I stood up to 150+ of my sorority sisters and replaced a culturally appropriative philanthropy event & the new one ended up being more successful
-Take part in boardroom meetings with people twice my age–real-world experience
-Transferring because my parent’s alma mater I grew up assuming I’d attend turned out to be not the right fit (as seen in my disastrous 2nd semester)
-Intern 25+ hours a week during the school year while taking 18 credits

Thank you all so much!

2

You seem like an involved and conscientious student, but regarding your seond semester, I have to ask what happened? This university has a 70% acceptance rate, which isn’t a bad thing, but I suspect it will not be the most academically intense college around. If your grades slipped there, surely it might be very tough at some of the colleges you want to get into? Particularly U Chicago, NU and Yale, which are known for being super intense.

In your parents’ shoes, I would not be happy to spend hundreds of dollars on application fees for colleges which I think you have an extremely low or no chance of getting into. I don’t know if you are a Ca resident, and I don’t know what the accpetsnce rate is for OOS transfers, but Berkeley and UCLA seem possible, as well as UVA and Boston U. Maybe USC too. You do not have any hooks. And I believe hooks are usually relevant for first year applicants.

By all means transfer, but I can’t see you getting into most of the colleges you are interested in. The second sememster grades are really unfortunate. Sorry to be negative. I hope I am wrong though.