<p>Why did you transfer? </p>
<p>Seeking a BS, was attending a community college, thus transferred after completing AS.</p>
<p>What was the experience like? </p>
<p>Because it was to an instate school only 15 minutes from previous school, process was relatively painless. That said, the state school has a tremendous bureaucracy, so some things are not doable or take more effort to accomplish. Case in point, credit transfer. Community college accepted my prior calculus I credit and so I started there with calculus II (then multivariable, diffeq, linear algebra). State school decides old credit does not count. So despite pointing out that I’ve finished with the engineering math sequence, the school insists I still have to complete calc I before graduation (going to take CLEP exam at the end of May probably).</p>
<p>Was orientation thorough and/or helpful?</p>
<p>Completely useless outside of getting registration blocks lifted and getting picture id. I would say the lunch was decent, but not $130 orientation fee decent! I suppose if I were planning to live on campus it might have been more relevant to me, but it was honestly just really awkward, boring, and nothing that anyone couldn’t read off the school website. Also, you would be surprised how little some administrators know about their own school’s policies.</p>
<p>How did you assimilate into the college community? What did you do? What worked/didn’t work? How did you make friends? Was it easy/hard?</p>
<p>My specific department administrator is really nice and one of the first things she did when I arrived was get all the other transfer students in the major together for pizza and introductions. Immediately we all bonded because we were foreigners in a strange land and also going to be in the same classes together. There was another transfer support group for all transferred, but heavily geared toward those in campus housing (still I enjoy the free pizza when offered). Because I’m further along in the curriculum, it’s easy to find people of like mind since the classes are small (i.e. only two other aerospace majors in my astrophysics classes). As well, joining small but focused organizations such as Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Gamma Tau were great ways to find other people just as hard working and nerdy as I am :-)</p>
<p>What was the academic experience?</p>
<p>The lower level classes are actually easier, on average, than what I took at my community college, though I mostly attribute that to the ginormous class sizes (i.e 700+ people in the same physics course), so the professor can’t really throttle classes the same way a smaller class size would allow. That said, now that I’m finally starting to take real engineering courses, the professors so far have been really good and the material challenging but interesting.</p>
<p>Was it what you hoped for?</p>
<p>I suppose so. I did not really have many expectations going in, but have been opportunistic, joining outside projects, volunteering, and generally starting to dictate my own path academically, socially, and professionally (intertwined really)</p>
<p>Anything else you’d like to add?
If you’re transferring to a big school, invest in a pair of good walking shoes. Just to get from the parking lots to my first class is a 15 minute walk at a good pace!</p>