<p>I’ve heard of schools deferring admittance for a semester (UC Berkeley does that) or a year (Harvard does that), but the idea of having a kid transfer from a top quality school to Cornell, just to go to Cornell, seems like a bit of an odd idea on Cornell’s part, and not very collegial to the other college, which will have invested in that student. That’s not your daughter’s worry, though. What might be is that it could be very socially and academically disruptive to start college twice; most students make their good friends as first years, in dorms, and it is much harder after that at most schools. (The UC’s are a little different because they accept such a large number of transfers, but my own experience transferring was that I found it very hard to meet people, and there was a lot of adjusting to do, even in schools in the same state and of the same size, and where I already knew some people). One frequent poster on CC had a kid who chose one school over another, then transferred, then transferred back…unfortunately (or fortunately in some ways), it is possible to like many different schools and types of schools, but you generally just choose and stick with one. It would seem best to go to a school with the full intention of staying unless it simply turns out to have been a bad choice. Which is not to say that it would be a bad thing to keep options open IF your daughter has a reason for preferring Cornell apart from the “ivy” name. Many Oberlin students have declined Ivies for Oberlin - because they preferred a LAC or wanted a double degree - and lived to tell the tale with no regrets.</p>