<p>I am surprised that many of you seem to have experience reviewing applications with an admissions committee... or not.</p>
<p>donpon,</p>
<p>Instead of relying on the apocryphal postings of persons on this forum, I highly suggest you call the schools to which you plan to apply. Swarthmore is an excellent start.</p>
<p>Brand_181, caa5042.</p>
<p>I had a 2.3 GPA in high school, a 3.91 at a school on par with community college which somehow placed me into Georgetown and, later, a 3.79 (combined from Georgetown and the prior school), which placed me at Rice and the University of Chicago. My SAT II scores are abysmally low.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The college will imediately toss your high school record into the trash when they see achievements like THESE.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Posts like this are simply rubbish. You have not been in an admissions office, so you cannot possibly know how committees treat the multifarious applications they receive. Students on this forum were rejected from Yale and accepted at Harvard, and vice versa. 4.0s from Rice University are rejected at Cornell! These outcomes only attest to the fact that transfer admissions is rarely formulaic, and most assumptions are either dogma from freshmen admissions or sheer speculation.</p>
<p>When I was transferring, I rarely sought advice on this forum. Nearly everything I know on this issue is from the mouth of an admissions officer. Admissions officers are not only paid to decide on your application, they are also paid to make the admissions process as lucid as they can for you. If something requires disambiguation, admissions officers will help, and if an admissions officer believes that the absence (or presence) of something is detrimental to an applicant's chances, he or she will tell you... if you ask.</p>
<p>Now this does not mean that you should start asking "what are my chances?" This does mean, however, that one should ask whether not taking the SAT IIs will be detrimental to one's application for admissions. Such a question, and others similar to it, is a nontrivial question which admissions officers are supposed to answer.</p>
<p>Donpon,</p>
<p>Seeking advice from these halfwits, or even on this forum, regarding something as fragile and as important as your applications for transfer admissions is unwise; if anything, the multiple contradictions in this thread should have led you to that conclusion. Speak to people who have experience, speak to admissions officers, and absolutely do not rely on the information given to you by others who have yet to experience the process.</p>
<p>My law school admissions counselor called these boards "the crack boards": an abundance of contradictory information, with people who think (they know) are right, but most probably are not; our uncertainty regarding the whole process makes us addicted to such a palliative.</p>