My transfer application experience+ advice for future applicants(long post beware)

Transfer Students
1

<p>So I've been lurking around CC for about a year now, eager to get out of my current school. I had a lot of success and after considering my options(i.e. finances), i will be going to cornell next year (from a tier 4). So here is a brief summary of my application experience, for anyone who's interested:</p>

<p>My stats:
Asian international
HS
95.9 from elite nyc public/ivy feeder
2230 SAT, 35 ACT
2370 Math 2/Chem/Bio (super score after a few retakes)
dozen or so APs, mostly 5s
some officer positons in clubs/publications, 400 hours volunteer work,USABO qualifier, AIME, some local volunteer awards--basically a decent mix of ECs and awards
Decisions: Rejected or waitlisted-->rejected by 14 schools (including HYP), admitted to 5 (1 SUNY, UCLA,UCB,Middlebury, CUNY honors)
The UCs and Midd made my applications results not complete fail, but I still wasn't accepted by anywhere I moderately wanted to attend.</p>

<p>College:
1st semester GPA: 4.0 at CUNY honors, psych major, 2nd semster:3.7
Retook SAT for a 2380 800/800/780,Essay- 8 out of 12
Took several 200 level classes and a foreign language
research at a few labs
lots of scholarships and an honorable mention for a prestigious national one
more volunteer work
credits as of now:99 (heeavily inflated by AP credits- got credit for 13 APs plus 6 winter credits plus am taking 12 summer credits)</p>

<p>I applied to 19 schools including Cornell (CALS), Columbia (the College), Brown, Penn(CAS), Northwestern (Communications), Vanderbilt(A/S), UChicago, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Smith, SUNY Stonybrook, Binghamton, Rice, Barnard, Amherst, JHU, Yale, Middlebury, NYU (Gallatin), and the big kahuna, Harvard.</p>

<p>I got into:Cornell (CALS), Columbia (CC), Penn(CAS),Brown, Northwestern (Communications), Vanderbilt(A/S), UChicago, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Smith, SUNY Stonybrook, Binghamton, Rice, Barnard, NYU (Gallatin)-->with junior standing at several of these schools to boot.</p>

<p>I was waitlisted by: Harvard (and did not stay on)
I withdrew from: Yale
I was forcefully withdrawn by: Middlebury (they pulled a Harvard this year)
I was rejected by: Amherst</p>

<p>I did not apply for aid, because I can't file a FAFSA(no greencard yet and my visa expired recently). I applied last minute eveywhere, due to heavy procrastination. As a result a missed a lot of classes which negatively impacted my GPA. Many of the places I applied too (Columbia, Cornell, Harvard) I sent my app up to several days past the deadline. I faxed my midterm grades to 7-8 schools only (ivies and the LACs). My essays were somewhat generic and stilted in style, but specific at times.</p>

<p>Why I think I got in: I had a good GPA from a school that doesn't have too many applicants. Also I had a lot of credits, so I think some schools figured I would be ineligble for transfer next year, even though my application was solid. I did research for alums and professors of ivies, and got good rec letters from. Also I took a lot of foreign language classes in german,spanish, arabic, and currently japanese(although my speaking writing skills are pretty bad in the latter two)</p>

<p>What wish I had done differently and advice that future transfers applicants should keep in mind for spring 2011/fall 2011 (this is the place where you wake up in case the novel above put you to sleep):</p>

<p>-DO NOT APPLY TO A LOT OF SCHOOLS. Transfer apps are TIME CONSUMING and if you
apply to more than 7-8 schools, you (like I had) have little idea of what you want out of a school. There is no way you can adequately research/visit 20 schools in an application cycle without putting a dent in your GPA/ECs/social life. These apps really burned me out, and I could have been doing much more meaningful things than applying to a school that had I though about more carefully, probably wouldn't attend. I think I applied to so many schools because I had a major chip on my shoulder stemming my fresh admissions experience.</p>

<p>-Take your essays to your school's writing center. Have as many people read it as possible. You don't need to write an award-winning essay, but it's gotta pass the sniff test. have your rec writers review your essay if possible.</p>

<p>-People will disagree with me on this, but retake your SATs if you have less than a 2200 if you're applying to a top 20. it is much less important in college and some schools don't consider college retakes, but give the ones that do one less reason to reject you. I didn't want my SAT score to "be good enough" to be a decent applicant, I wanted it to be in the top quartile of admitted student stats of the most selective schools I applied to. </p>

<p>-ECs are important, but only if you have leadership positons/ spent significant time in/on them.</p>

<p>-Get things like transcripts, recs, SAT scores, etc. that are not in your control done EARLY. By early I mean you should be asking your rec writers a week to two weeks after your class with them have finished. For each of my rec writers, when I got the Ok that they would write them for me, I prepared a packed with stamped,addressed envelopes and forms requiring only a signature and the letter itself, as well as a statement of why I was transferring and a chart of deadlines. I handed in all this stuff in late January. All of my recs were sent by mid-february, giving each rec writer 2-3 weeks to produce 3 page letters.</p>

<p>-Hope for the best, expect the worst. Transfer admissions can be much more selective than freshman admissions, so you need to realize that your efforts are more likely than not to become a sunk cost. Before getting my first wave of acceptances, I was plannig my schedule for the fall and tjhinking of what schools to reapply to next year (I wasn't expecting to get in anywhere other than my state schools and maybe nyu).
-If you get in somewhere you will be attending, don't slack. I stopped attending class and screwed up on a lot of finals, which brought down my GPA in classes I would have normally aced. If you are applying to grad school, keep in mind that adcoms look the the GPa of all schools you attended.</p>

<p>-Finally, do try to make the most of where you are currently, escpecially if you are a freshman. I was almost determined to be unhappy at my current school, and I feel like I spent my freshman year badly as a result. I could have had a much more productive year if I wasn't so biased into dislinking my school, which in turn could have enhanced my apps and made me a whole lot happier.</p>

<p>Anyhoo, that's my transfer experience(and a redonkulously long post). Good luck to all you future applicants! Maybe I'll see some of you at cornell!</p>

2

<p>I’m curious, why did you choose Cornell over Columbia? Are you studying something unique at CALS? </p>

<p>Besides that, best of luck at Cornell! My cousin goes there and she LOVES it!</p>

3

<p>Big congrats. You got into some awesome schools. </p>

<p>What exactly did you mean when you said “I had a good GPA from a school that doesn’t have too many applicants.”</p>

4

<p>Congratulations and thanks for the awesome advice. I’m sure you’ll make a big impact on whichever of those amazing schools you choose to go to.</p>

5

<p>@akuna: cornell is on average $30K a year less than either penn or columbia. I am not eligible for financial aid, so I have to pay full price wherever I go. It makes sense to go to the cheapest school then, since cornell isn’t far behind in prestige/strength of program/soft facts (at least not $30K behind) when compared to penn or columbia. My parents make very little, so even 50K in undergrad debt is pretty daunting. If I chose columbia, it’d be around 180K(they accepted me for soph transfer as opposed to junior transfer, like penn and cornell did). Add that to a 25K grad program and 200K for med school and I’m look at well over 500K in student loans (yipes!).</p>

<p>@helloiam: many peope from my current school who are not in the honors program apply to state schools, since most do not have the HS stats for top 30 schools. I asked my advisor, and typically only a handful of people apply to the best schools, so there is less intra-school competition for me. My high school in comparison, had a few hundred applicants to most ivies/ top 10 and everyone was a pretty solid applicant, so the competition between students was a lot more fierce.</p>

<p>@godric: thank you, i hope so too =)</p>

6

<p>How can you go to a US public school as a foreigner if you do not hold green card?</p>

7

<p>@Lesley, Cornell is a private university</p>

<p>@darkshadow, …</p>

8

<p>@lesleyg: i have a visa, which would would qualify me as an international student. you don’t need a greencard to attend school here. why do you think universities grant F-1s?</p>

<p>also, ■■■■■ harder darkshadow. i’m sorry that you didn’t get anything constructive out of my post. you didn’t get into any of the abovementioned schools as a freshman either,huh?</p>

<p>damn, a kitten just died somewhere because i acknowledged your solitary brain cell.</p>

9

<p>Darkshadow…you are stupid. At risk of feeding the ■■■■■, melonbread91 is taking loans to pay for college so he IS paying the same amount as us, if not more for the lack of government granted financial aid. Apparently loans give you fictitious money? And the majority of students who go to college are American citizens. Learn to get your facts straight and not be so discriminatory</p>

<p>@Melonbread91, thanks for all the information you gave, not too long at all! In fact if you have any more advice, could you PM me? If not, it’s understandable, don’t want you to go to more effort just for me. Plus you were pretty in depth, thanks again :)</p>

10

<p>As somebody else who just went through the transfer process this year, I agree so much with most of the things melonbread91 has said. Especially the part about not applying to a lot of schools; my life was a screaming hellmess between December and mid-March this year thanks to transfer apps!</p>

<p>Luckily, it all paid off, and I’ll be going to Smith this fall. :D</p>

11

<p>…Can’t believe I actually read Darkshadow’s post. Two minutes. Gone. Forever.</p>

12

<p>Hey melon,
what do you mean by saying that Middlebury forcefully withdrew you? Just curious =/</p>

13

<p>Middlebury wasn’t accepting transfer’s this year so his application was withdrawn</p>