<p>Hi -- I'm currently an undergrad at Dartmouth and I'm flooding in student loans debt. I've calculated that by the time I graduate, I will have enough loans to almost match that of medical students. The Extension School's tuition for 4 years is the same as one semester of loans at Dartmouth. That may not be the case for a lot of guys, but for me, my family's assets were calculated differently and thus I get minimal grants.</p>
<p>I'm also applying to law school. I know Dartmouth is a great school and has great representation in law school admissions, but I have a near-perfect score on the LSAT as well as a nice GPA so I don't think the "Dartmouth" name on my app will help me a whole lot.</p>
<p>So should I transfer? I'm currently laboring through 2 part-time jobs while trying to maintain a premed course load.</p>
<p>Honestly? You would have to be completely, certifiably insane:</p>
<p>“I don’t think the “Dartmouth” name on my app will help me a whole lot.”</p>
<p>…it will help you more than “Harvard Extension School”, which is what you’ll have to put down. And having “Dartmouth, transferred to Harvard Extension School” is going to raise a lot of questions for people reading your app.</p>
<p>If money is really that much of a problem, I recommend that you transfer back home to your flagship state school. It will be cheaper.</p>
<p>Additionally, Harvard Extension School is really for working professionals who don’t have a college degree and who would like to obtain one without having to leave work.</p>
<p>This raises an important point about HES, regardless of any possible ■■■■■■■■ in post #1: </p>
<p>There is no such thing as “transferring to the Extension School”, because (unlike any reputable degree-granting program in the United States), HES does not accept non-HES credentials. Harvard Extension School’s admission policy requires you to pay a few thousand dollars of your money (tuition fee for four courses) and a few hundred hours of your time (acquisition of A or B grades in those courses) before they will consider your application for the AA and ALB programs. It doesn’t matter if your previous education was at Dartmouth, Oxford, MIT or Harvard College, or how high your SAT/GPA/LSAT numbers.</p>
<p>Thus, anyone trying to switch to HES would, procedurally, be held hostage for at least one or two semesters before learning whether or not further enrollment is an option. An applicant could move to Boston for the HES application process only to find out a year later that they didn’t get in, or be strung along for further semesters of this costly marathon of an application system. There have been reports here of students rejected (and encouraged to re-apply later) from the Extension School bachelor’s degree program due to overenrollment, so conceivably HES could keep a “transfer” student in a state of uncertainty for quite some time, if their priority is to enroll their historical population of older, working/nontraditional commuter students.</p>