<p>I attend a relatively small school in the Northeast with a very specific major, but am considering transferring to a large university in my home state.</p>
<p>Details:
-The large university has a well-developed, nationally regarded program in my major; my current school has a program in my major that is smaller and much less well-known.</p>
<p>-My current school's size/atmosphere means I have lots of academic freedom to easily double-major (which I would like to do) and explore academic interests, and also that I have much closer relationships with faculty, while attending the large university would greatly limit this.</p>
<p>Essentially, would I be better off getting a solid degree in my major from a top large state school, or double-majoring in a smaller (but excellent and highly-ranked) school with perhaps a weaker reputation in my current major but close faculty-student relationships and lots of room to explore academically?</p>
<p>(Please keep in mind, outside of academics, that I would be transferring from a school I chose and adored--but don't entirely love now that I'm here--to a big school I didn't even apply to and don't expect to love. Also, I can't shake the feeling that transferring closer to home would be failing at my new school.)</p>
<p>Why are you even considering transferring? Are you a freshman and having second thoughts? Your current school sounds wonderful to me. Maybe you over idealized it during the application period and now you are out of the infatuation stage and dealing with reality?</p>
<p>It may depend on whether your post-graduation plans involve employment that the major directly prepares you for, or PhD study in that major, versus plans where the major is not especially important (medical school, law school, employment not specific to that major). It may also depend on what out-of-major courses or second major you would be interested in taking.</p>
<p>Of course, cost differences can also be important.</p>
<p>It might help to know what your major is and if you see graduate school in your future. If grad school is a strong possibility, I’d stay where you are for undergrad school. My daughter chose the college she loved (Brown) that offered her major, but was weaker in her major than some other schools. But she did a semester abroad in her major and one summer in her major at Harvard, and worked in her major the other summers. In her case, grad school was in her future to get much more “training” in her field and so being at Brown worked out great since attending wasn’t all about her major, as long as they offered it.</p>
<p>“Maybe you over idealized it during the application period and now you are out of the infatuation stage and dealing with reality?”</p>
<p>Absolutely. I came to the conclusion that the reasons I came here aren’t valid. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t eventually come to be glad I came here, but at this point I’m not.</p>
<p>As for my plans after graduating, I really don’t know; my major is linguistics, which would likely require graduate work to pursue further, but I just don’t know right now if that’s what I want; I could conceivably pair it with a CS minor at either school to make it more useful alone, couldn’t I? (I’ve never taken a CS class, so I don’t know how much I’d enjoy it.) My second major wouldn’t be anything lucrative.</p>