Should I wait to transfer after another year or should I try to transfer now?

Transfer Students
1

I’m currently a freshman at Agnes Scott College. I’m pretty unhappy here and I would love to transfer.

Schools I want to get into that are waaaayyyy too reachy for me: Barnard (I applid ED as a senior and got rejected), Vanderbilt, USC, Northwestern, maybe Columbia (ahahaha not with my grades). I’m also open to suggestions.

Here are my ass

Here are my stats:

Demographics: Chinese-American female from California attending a private college in Georgia

Major: Music (production and/or performance)

College GPA (out of 4.0): 3.4 (one A-, three B+)
College Coursework: Public Health, Ethnomusicology, Acting, required Leadership class

High school GPA: 2.9UW/3.0W

I have no SAT/ACT

APs: World History, Music Theory, English Literature, Environmental Science, and Psychology
(school doesn’t offer IB or let students take more than 3 APs a year, don’t let freshmen take APs)

Extracurriculars (HS and College):

High school:

  • volunteer at Eating Disorder Resource Center (12)
  • advocate for Eating Disorder Organization Project HEAL (12)
  • counselor-in-training at summer camp (11,12)
  • wrangler-in-training at summer camp (11)
  • rode horses, didn’t compete (9,10,11,12)
  • volunteered at horse ranch I went to (9,10,12)
  • attended a very selective songwriting summer program held by the Grammys (12, summer before college)
  • played piano recreationally (9,10,11,12)
  • took singing lessons recreationally (12)
  • co-founder/coordinator of a club at my school(10)

College:

  • Vice President of the Freshman Class
  • Social Media Chair and content creator for HerCampus college chapter
  • Activism Chair for PlannedParenthood college chapter
  • Member of an Acapella group and performed at concerts
2

You need to be realistic if you want to be able to transfer. You also should do your best to keep your GPA up for this upcoming semester.

What do you want in a college or university? Agnes Scott is small. Barnard is relatively small. Columbia is much larger and in a big city, although the undergrad part is not super large. USC, if you are talking about Southern California has nearly 20,000 students, and if you are talking about South Carolina it is even larger.

What do you not like about Agnes Scott College? Do you want a larger school, or a different sort of music program, or something else?

I think that you need to figure out what you want in a college or university, and you also need to keep your grades up as much as you can.

Are you taking on any debt to attend your current university?

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You like Barnard and Columbia in NYC. Have you considered NYU, which is pretty easy to transfer into. Tisch School of the Arts is great for performance but hard to get into. In the same Greenwich Village neighborhood of NYC is The New School. It’s College of Performing Arts includes both Mannes School of Music, which is more classically oriented, and The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music. These are both true urban universities without much of a campus feel. Very different from Agnes Scott in Decatur. You have to love the city for this to be viable because The City truly is your campus.

In addition to Northwestern in Chicago, DePaul’s School of Music is superb.

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As far as transferring, you’ll have more options if you stay at your current school and work on improving your GPA, cultivating relationships with professors and ECs because as a junior transfer your HS record will carry significantly less weight. However, if you’re looking to move ASAP the schools you’ve listed are competitive for transfers so I’d add a few more to round out your list.

If you want to keep your music major these list schools you might also consider.

Some schools to consider for music production.

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5

This.

There is a big disconnect between your academic history, your professional aspirations and your list of prospective colleges. Learn more about programs that are a better fit for you (the colleges in the links @vpa2019 posted are a good place to start), not just the same names from a HS student wearing prestige goggles.

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Would you be willing to share what you don’t like about ASC? What is it like being a music major there? I’m assuming there aren’t many… What do you plan to do career wise?

7

What is your instrument/voice and genre of focus? If you’re planning to apply to music performance programs then the most important factor in admissions will be your audition. Are you taking private lessons now?

I would suggest also starting a thread in the music major forum here.

1 Like