<p>I'm a Junior at a small prep school in Massachusetts, but I have the opportunity to transfer to Phillips Exeter for my last year in high school. Basically, my family is moving to NH, and I could go either to Exeter or to the school I'm going to now, with a 45 minute drive every morning.
I don't really want to have to start over for a single year, but it's a great opportunity, academically.</p>
<p>What I'm really asking is, do any of you have experience in how disruptive a one-year switch is, and whether or not transferring schools for that one year will affect college opportunity (one way or the other)? Thanks.</p>
<p>Edit: I'd say my current school is third tier, maybe fourth. About 350 students total.</p>
<p>I would not advise you to transfer unless you have to , but you have the choice.</p>
<p>1) 45 min drive is not going to be fun eventually. it's brutal and this friend of mine actually ended up skipping mainly b/c she didn't want to get up and drive that long some times.</p>
<p>2) there are bad and good sides to transferring. from personal experience, i would not trasfer unless the semester/term is finished. but i guess it's june so i'm thinking you're doing this upcoming fall.</p>
<p>3) i see...the new school is better academically. although the school might be "better" if your old school isn't too bad, i wouldn't move.</p>
<p>4) moving the last year can be catastrophic. first, if you care about friendship and adjustment, it takes you at least a quarter to get used to the new/different system. sometimes, some things may not be available in your new school and the same class/club/activity may not transfer. i would check with the new school before.</p>
<p>I moved before junior year, and to be honest, the transition hasn't been the best. You basically have to start from scratch again, and for me it was and still is a bit difficult to make friends. Plus a lot of seniority is gone when it comes to clubs (i.e. if you want to be captain for a sport, a lot of your peers will always vote for seniority, it's just an unspoken rule really, or if you want to be president of a club but it's only your first year there. People will feel bad, but a lot of people in my experience will still vote for seniority even if you have a great speech. I know this from experience).</p>
<p>And what bravura said about recommendation letters is extremely true. My teachers this year barely know me because to be honest I'm not really myself anymore than I was from my first two years in high school with people I knew, best friends I had classes with, and teachers I knew and could talk to on a personal basis.</p>
<p>Moving to a new school senior year would be difficult in my opinion friendship wise-- people have already got their set of friends, if you know what I mean? It's been like that junior year for me. It's difficult to find a really good group to hang out with and truly trust, if you care about that type of thing.</p>
<p>To me, it's not worth it. But if you do transfer, your experience could be really different from mine since you're a different person in a different place. I don't know.</p>