First, congrats! Even colleges that say they are need blind, generally do not apply that to transfer students. So the fact that you needed significant aid could certainly have been a factor. The fact that you not only got into Brandeis but that they are meeting your full need say so much about you. Should should be very proud of what you have accomplished!
Congrats on the full ride to Brandeis! Don’t let the negative comment get you down.
And you weren’t rejected from every school. You got a great acceptance!! It only takes one!
Getting into Brandeis as a freshman is extremely difficult and impressive, but getting in as a transfer from a community college? Wow. Just wow. No disrespect to your counselors, but in saying that you should get into at least Cornell, they have no idea what they are talking about. The fact that they didn’t make you apply to at least your state flagship utterly baffles me. I guess it just shows that hardly anyone from CCs apply to highly selective colleges. And I have to wonder what you meant by various hooks and a unique story.
In 2016, out of their 1250 transfer applicants, Yale only accepted 28 students. 28. And I’m sure all the other schools you applied to have similar admit rates. And this includes army veterans, OOS students at UCLA whose parents can no longer afford the tuition, students who got expelled from Brigham Young for being gay, children of huge donors who missed the bar by a long mile in high school, and Stanford students who decide to major in something not offered at their school. After all that, the number of spots left for everyone else is just a portion of that.
If being upset about only a Brandeis acceptance as a transfer applicant isn’t bad enough, this is what worries me. As someone in academia, I can tell you that hoping to get into an ‘Ivy League grad school’ makes absolutely no sense. In Ph.D. admission, the most important things are programs well-respected in your academic area and faculty who do research relevant and interesting to you. If you don’t get over your current ideas of prestige you could end up either in a program which is not a good fit, or rejected from everywhere you apply, both of which are detrimental.
I do hope you know which social science.
At the end of the day, you are a bright and successful student who was unfortunately given very misleading information by people who were not well informed about the competitiveness of college admission these days. This isn’t really your fault, but you need to work on not realigning your ideas of ‘success’ in college admission so you can be thrilled about Brandeis. Because you should be!
Go to Brandeis, do amazing things there and I have no doubt that your parents and your community will take great pride in you and your accomplishments.
Agree with respect to the Ivy League schools. But OP has outstanding credentials & was given “the extremely rare chance of doing transfer interviews at several of these colleges” and that her impression is that the interviews “went EXTREMELEY well”.
OP has the grades, standardized test scores, enthusiastic recommenders & received serious consideration for admission as a transfer student by those schools requesting an interview. OP is justifiably befuddled by the results that she received only one acceptance when it seems reasonable that she could have gotten two to four acceptances.
Rather than just seeking consolation & reassurance about her situation, OP is wise to generate an evaluation and discussion of her results so that any weakness can be strengthened.
For one contemplating earning a PhD or medical school, interviewing skills are of substantial importance. Although OP thinks that she did extremely well in the interview portion with multiple schools, including Cornell, Brown & Dartmouth, her self assessment could be wrong in this subjective area. OP, therefore, might want to try mock interviews with faculty & admissions at her current school in order to get some outside evaluation.
@PrinceAbu: With which of your target schools did you interview ? Was Brandeis among the schools that requested an interview ?
Maybe the major the OP planned to pursue was oversubscribed at the schools she thought she’d get into. Maybe they are over-enrolled in general or might have had housing issues-- who knows. Just musing. Not reason to do a postmortem autopsy. Better to celebrate the acceptance and think about what grad program they plan to consider and research them wisely, as @YaleMomOf7 suggests.
Brandeis is a great school. You should thank your lucky stars you got in with 100% need met.
Surprised to hear that you were rejected at Cornell. What college/major within Cornell did you apply?
Cornell has articulation agreements with many community colleges, and as long as you have above a 3.5 GPA, its almost guaranteed. I think they may even use the word ‘guarantee’ in some of the agreements.
But this mainly applies for majors which are less popular: Agriculture sciences, Animal science, Communication, Sociology, Plant Science, Food science, etc.
Unfortunately I think that financial aid does play a role, so having full need may have reduced your chances.
Please read this article in the Cornell Sun
http://cornellsun.com/2010/05/05/c-u-enters-into-transfer-agreement-with-n-j-college/
The state-afilliated divisons at Cornell (Ag & Life Sciences, Human Ecology, Industrial & Labor Relations) accept the bulk of Cornell’s transfer applicants. If the OP applied to a different division of the university, transfer admission is much more challenging. CALS, HumEc, and ILR do offer some majors that overlap with other divisions, but they aren’t exactly the same major, obviously. Not every transfer applicant to Cornell has the luxury of being able to choose between divisions for their major and so apply to one where they are much more lilely to be admitted.
The guaranteed transfer program that includes Cornell is about NY State comm colleges.
I don´t know what your major is, but Ivys are insanely hard to get into as a transfer. For business the acceptance rate is well below 5%. Brandeis is rank 34 in the nation. There are thousands of colleges in the US and you´re way above all of them.
I also have a 4.0 and got rejected from Ivy’s, so you´re not alone. The way I like to look at it is that Community College really doesn´t mean anything. It´s rock bottom when it comes to colleges. You, however, went from rank 99999 to rank 34 
The OP wasn’t rejected from “every” school so I edited the title of the thread.