You may want to post a question on the “College Search and Selection” forum section, with a subject like “Looking for safety colleges with linguistics major” and giving pertinent details like the student’s unweighted GPA, class rank, and test scores, cost constraints, state of residency, and other desires (e.g. location of college).
If the local school does not offer linguistics, it is not a good plan B. If all her schools are too “reachy,” that is not a good college list. Keep hunting while there is still time.
If she did end up at a plan B school and wanted to transfer after one year, it’s not recommended to try to transfer to one of the schools that rejected her. She should apply to a new list of not-quite-so-selective schools.
I appreciate all the advice but, trust me, she has a good list of Reaches, Possibles and Safeties.
Maybe it would have been better if I’d just posted this -
My daughter’s guidance counselor suggested that in the event she failed to get into any of the schools she really hopes to she should enroll at a local college for a year and then transfer. It sounds logical enough but what I don’t understand is why a college that rejected you once would offer you a place a year later after you have been studying at a supposedly less rigorous school?
I’d think most kids who would get in as transfers but not first years “prove themselves” in some way - grades, ECs, the things that they lacked as seniors in HS. Generally that would be really strong college course grades but hey, if they wrote a bestseller or starred in a feature film or something that could bump them up too.
But I’d guess it’s mostly better academic performance in college than HS.
If she has safeties where admission is assured, affordability is assured, her academics of interest are offered, and she otherwise likes them, does she have to worry about getting shut out?
Or is the worry that the “safeties” may not actually be safeties?
Typically, this means that the student did well enough in the first two or three semesters of college to be admitted as a transfer student. In many states, transferring from a community college to the state flagship is common.
I think the problem may be if she doesn’t get into her first choice (which may be a big reach) that she’ll come to think of the safeties as placeholders where she’ll go for a year or two and then retry for her reach.
That might mean she doesn’t enjoy the first two years and is always waiting for better things. Sometimes it is hard enough to sell the safeties but for the GC to tell her there is still hope to transfer will just be living in limbo. It also may cause her to select the safety over, say, school #2 or #3 with the hope of going to #1 in a year.
Not sure what you are expecting/hoping to hear…if indeed your D has a good list of reaches, possibles and safeties, then the scenario the counselor presents shouldn’t happen. A safety is just that – a school that she is almost assured of getting into, that has the programs she is interested in, and is one that your family can afford.
No, it is not a good idea to go to a local college and hope to transfer. At most schools, there are far fewer transfer spots available than freshman spots and many of the advantages afforded to freshman in terms of scholarships, etc. aren’t available to transfers. Moreover, barring any significant changes in her profile (and getting a few As in one semester [that’s all that she will have completed by the time RD applications are due] spending a year at a lesser college won’t constitute a significant change in her profile), a college that already rejected her wouldn’t have much motivation to accept her as a transfer.
If your D finds herself shut out and/or doesn’t like her options, she’s better off taking a gap year and reapplying to a new set of schools as a freshman, and she should use gap year to enhance her application.
We needed to get 2 kids through college. No college savings, and an EFC we could not possibly afford.
The older kid, average stats, average student, went to community college first. She would not have been eligible for any of the big merit packages for incoming freshman offered at some big U’s. She then transferred to our in-state flagship.
For the younger kid, it made no sense to send her to community college first because her test scores were going to earn her full tuition and full tuition plus merit awards at various OOS public U’s.
Unfortunately, she did not really want to go to any of them.
She also based her application list on a particular major. She crossed some schools off the list because the schools did not have her major. Summer before freshman year, she changed her major to something very different!
I’m chiming in to say, in our experience, choice of major can change, even radically. And, in our experience, a kid can grow to enjoy a school they reluctantly agreed to apply to and attend.
If you need money for college, that 33 ACT will get you a LOT of merit money, but maybe not at any of the schools your kid feels she deserves or worked so hard for.
OP, we all have the cold sweats, at some point, that they won’t get in anywhere.
Re: your revised question in #22: sometimes, in a lesser college, a student can distinguish herself, exceed expectations, the challenges she does take on can show she’s ready for the next tier. And sometimes not. That’s a risk.
Of all the factors in admissions, one tough one is geo diversity. That won’t change as a transfer applicant. So in your safety strategy, along with instate publics, look at some colleges where she may represent some geo diversity of her own, not be one of scores of candidates from your local area.
If your question really is “why would she be able to get in as a transfer if she didn’t get in as a freshman?”
Then the answer is that usually students can’t. Most often they just get rejected a second time after a gap year or as transfers.
That really is my question. Thank you everyone.