I graduated with an Associate’s degree from a community college with a 4.0. I worked full time while taking a full course load. I also took care of my sick parents and grandmother and siblings. I was the president of three clubs in the community college, great extra curriculars, volunteering work and excellent letters of recommendation.
I applied to transfer to all 8 Ivies, BC, Wellesley, Smith, Brandeis and MIT. Unfortunately, I was rejected from every single college, except Brandeis and will be attending Brandeis. The good thing about Brandeis is that they’ve met 100% of my need and I love the faculty.
However, I had great dreams of transferring to Harvard and Princeton or MIT and it has greatly affected my self esteem. Everyone, from my professors to my counsellors said that I would AT LEAST get into Cornell or Wellesley with my various hooks and unique story.
How do I feel good about going to Brandeis? I eventually plan to get a PhD in the social sciences. Would a Brandeis education help me get into an Ivy League grad school?
First off, congratulations on your acceptance to Brandeis! You are in a very enviable position to be going to a fantastic school and with full need!
Competition at the Ivies and the like is crazy. I’m sorry that you had people telling you were a shoe in. That isn’t a statement anyone can or should make. They set you up for unnecessary disappointment even though you have a super option on the table.
Look through the posts here on CC. You’ll see everyone saying the same thing - apply to a few reach schools, mostly matches, and a few safeties. Unfortunately none of the schools on your list remotely could have been considered safeties or even high probability matches. You are super lucky that you landed where you are and that it’s affordable. You should be proud!!!
Work hard at Brandeis, do well on your GRE, and you will have great chances of getting into grad programs.
For super selective colleges like Harvard/Princeton/MIT, transfer admission can be even more selective than first year admission. That’s saying a lot. Not too many students want to leave these schools. If Stanford is typical, some of these schools may be favoring transfer applicants with certain kinds of life experiences, such as military veterans.
Brandeis is excellent. You are lucky to be getting in with 100% of your need covered.
You applied to a host of hyper-competitive colleges that take very few transfer students and you didn’t get in. No matter how accomplished you are that should not come as a surprise. You did yourself a disservice by thinking those schools would be anything more than a high reach for an unhooked applicant, yourself included, in the transfer process.
You got into a school where you love the faculty and that meets full aid. Rejoice! Thank your lucky stars that you applied to Brandeis, got in, and be grateful that you received a financial package that works for you.
Get off that prestige wagon. If your self-esteem is damaged by going to Brandeis that is a big problem in my books. Brandeis is one of the many wonderful schools out there where you can have a great experience and get wherever you want to go in life.
I would also jump off that “prestige” Ivy bandwagon for PhD programs as well. First of all any reputable PhD program will be very hard to get into, especially directly out of undergrad. Second, many choose a PhD program by the professor they want to mentor them and the work he/she does – not by if the school is an Ivy or not.
Your college experience will be more about what you put into it then where you are. It is time to embrace the college that embraced you. Take full advantage of everything Brandeis has to offer. Continue to work as hard as you have been and success will follow. Brandeis is a great acceptance.
Brandeis is a great school. Congratulations on your acceptance there. Also congratulations on your financial aid which is a very big deal.
If you applied to every Ivy League school and MIT, my first impression is that you had no idea what you wanted in a university. There is a big difference among these 9 universities, and IMHO they are not all a good match for anyone. I would say that this might have hurt your chances at getting into any of them, except that transferring into any of them is so exceptionally difficult. It is significantly more difficult than getting accepted as a freshman.
Expect Brandeis to be very academically challenging, and significantly more challenging than any school that you have ever attended. If you do very well there, you should have a good chance at graduate school at any university that you would like to attend. However, when this time comes please pay attention to what you want in a university, look closely at the specific programs, and don’t just apply to the highest ranked universities that you can find.
Yes, a degree from Brandeis with high grades and strong recommendations will help you to get into a very strong graduate school.
The valedictorian of my son’s high school, a National Merit Finalist, will be attending Brandeis.
It is a college attended by smart students, with excellent professors (two of whom won a Nobel prize this year). It is a great university for many reasons, including that it is small enough to have many of the benefits of a small college and yet is a major research university.
Enjoy the experience!
Only transfer if you are unhappy once you are there. Do not go expecting to be unhappy and to transfer. Give it a chance. You may love it.
Do you have any idea how many kids would like to be in your shoes? Your post comes off as very entitled, and is incredibly insulting to the thousands of high-achieving kids who didn’t make it into Brandeis (as well as the ones that did).
Seriously, @Publisher??? Why would you even say that about Wellesley and Smith? Who cares?? OP is looking for support here.
OP, Brandeis is a fabulous school. You already really like it, and it’s affordable. Count your lucky stars and have a fabulous time there!
Wow! Congratulations! Your hard work paid off and you got full financial support to attend Brandeis! After your very challenging last two years I think you will be in heaven! You will be able to focus on your studies amid some of the brightest students in the country.
You can only attend one school at a time–enjoy the heck out of this one and don’t spend a moment regretting the ones that got away.
Brandeis has an excellent reputation and I think you should change your mindset and choose to be happy about your acceptance. Hopefully you’ll come to see that your expectations of gaining admission to an Ivy League school after community college was an unrealistic one. You have every opportunity to become a successful person with a Brandeis education and you should embrace it.
By way of comparison, let me tell you about my nephew:
Graduated with a GPA of 4.0 unweighted, 4.65 weighted from a prestigious private prep school.
Had an SAT score in the 99th percentile
Had a list of impressive extracurricular activities
Rejected at Harvard
Rejected at Yale
Rejected at Princeton
Rejected at Penn
Rejected at Georgetown
Waitlisted at Johns Hopkins
Accepted at Washington U St. Louis
He ended up attending his safety school, Wash U.
After graduating from Wash U in the top 5% of his class, he did a one year stint at Teach America.
Following that, he applied to law schools with a strong GPA and high LSAT scores:
Rejected at Yale law
Rejected at Harvard law
Rejected at Columbia law
Accepted at NYU law; partial scholarship
Accepted at Georgetown law; no scholarship
Accepted at George Washington law; full scholarship.
He went to GWU law and graduated third in his class last year. He was on law review and did a one year clerkship upon graduation. His starting salary at a DC law firm is $265,000.
So, you see, he went to his safety school for undergrad and he didn’t get into his top choices for law school, yet he is a successful person who is living a good life.
Please don’t focus so much on the Ivy League; those schools are a lottery for even the best candidates.
Thanks everyone for your replies. I do apologise if I came across as being entitled
I come from a very low income Chinese immigrant family and the first person in the family to go to college and my parents and community had the whole “Ivy League” sexy brand name pushed onto me. I just thought that going to a brand name school would make them extremely proud as both my parents have worked so hard to provide for my family and I.
I even had the extremely rare chance of doing transfer interviews at several of these colleges and the interviews went EXTREMELY well. Hence, I had a feeling that I would at least get into Cornell or Brown or Dartmouth.
@Publisher , My SAT scores were 730 for reading and writing, 790 for Math and my ACT Composite was 34.
I wonder if needing high financial aid had a negative impact on my application. However, this is weird as Brandeis is need-aware for transfers and schools like Wellesley, the Ivies and even BC are need-blind
That is my understanding as well. Ivies are a reach for everyone. Cornell has just reinstated the transfer option which may have taken up all available spots.
Brandeis is an excellent school. Transfer acceptance rate for female applicants was 32.5 %. Smith College is slightly over 28% & Wellesley is over 21%.
Among elite universities, Vanderbilt’s transfer acceptance rate is much higher than their freshman acceptance rate.
But the keys are the financial aid & that you like Brandeis & the professors there. After all, you can only attend one & to get your full financial need met is a blessing.
I do wish people would stop pretending Cornell, Brown and Dartmouth are aasier fish to catch. It’s not the sort of thinking that…well, gets you into an Ivy.
Sorry. OP, first things first. Start Brandeis, do your best, and later find the right programs for your grad school interests- not the right prestige for friends and family. Your college profs in your major will be your best advisors re: grad programs.
