<p>What has made you come to the determination that Stony Brook’s economics department is “rather weak”? Their economics PhD program is in the top 30 in the country (by the National Research Council, which is the gold standard for academic department rankings). And if you want to go to medical school, why does it even matter if you go to a “strong” economics department?</p>
<p>I think some of the undergrads here get the wrong idea about majors. Don’t get me wrong - they’re important, and you want to go to a school that has a good to excellent department in the major in which you’re interested. But most good colleges have good departments in liberal arts fields. Even if Stony Brook’s PhD program weren’t one of the better-ranked programs for economics, Stony Brook in and of itself is a great school and the economics department is likely to be very adequate for your needs. Besides most students will take 12-15 courses in their major, at best, out of the ~40-45 classes you will take in college. That’s like 33% of your classes. If the university suits your needs in every other way, there’s really no need to transfer.</p>
<p>And honestly, just thinking about it, the places that are ranked higher than it in economics are places that don’t take very many transfer students. They’re places like Harvard, MIT, Chicago, Princeton, Caltech, Berkeley, NYU, Northwestern, Brown, Yale, Columbia, Wash U, Duke, and Cornell. There are some other public institutions in there (Wyoming, Wisconsin, Minnesota) but I see no particular reason to transfer from Stony Brook to one of those institutions when qualitatively your experience will probably be about the same wrt academics.</p>
<p>As for the top schools, most only take a very limited number of transfers every year and they tend to either be “hooked” candidates or come from peer schools. I used to work in student affairs at Columbia and the only transfer students I knew came from other top 20-30ish schools (like my RA who transferred from Dartmouth to Columbia). In the past I’ve checked out transfer admissions rates for students to these top places and they’re even lower than the regular admission admit rate. Last year Harvard admitted 15 transfer students out of 1,448 who applied. That’s the same amount they admitted the year before, and then the two years before they they admitted 0 transfers. Stanford says that their transfer admissions ranges from 1-4%. Yale takes 20-30 students out of over 1,000, which means the largest their transfer admission rate can be is 3%.</p>
<p>[url=<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/transfer-students/1362873-transfer-acceptance-rates-top-25-schools-2011-collegeboard.html]Here’s[/url">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/transfer-students/1362873-transfer-acceptance-rates-top-25-schools-2011-collegeboard.html]Here’s[/url</a>] a great old thread on the low acceptance rates at top universities.</p>
<p>The good news is that these schools do put a great amount of weight on your high school grades and test scores, especially for freshman transfers. The caveat is that EVERYONE applying for transfer to places like Harvard and Columbia has high school stats like yours AND good college grades. Stanford says that their average transfer GPA is around a 3.8. The other schools are also expecting students who did very well in their first semester in college. But they’re looking for more - you have to have a “compelling reason” to transfer somewhere else, something you’re looking for. All of the schools say it on their website, but Yale probably says it best:</p>
<p>Given the competitive nature of the transfer admissions process, candidates should have compelling reasons for attending Yale and should think carefully about whether Yale is the right fit for them before making the effort to complete an application.</p>
<p>My RA who transferred from Dartmouth to Columbia, for example, said something like Dartmouth was a bit too isolated and he wanted to study in a more urban area; he wanted a more diverse student body to be with, and a different kind of student life environment. I can’t remember everything he said but I remember thinking hey, I’d admit him too, lol. So whatever reason you give, it needs to be better than wanting a stronger economics department - it needs to be about the total experience.</p>