Some advice please? looking to transfer in two years

Transfer Students
1

<p>In a couple of weeks I will be attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst). I was accepted to the University of California Davis initially but had my admissions rescinded in early July. After hearing the bad news, I quickly enrolled into Umass, who I had not followed up with about my intentions to enroll or not after being accepted in april, and became a Mathematics concentrator.</p>

<p>I come from a public highschool and I received a 2.7 as my final gpa. I had had a SAT score of 2080 (Math:800 Reading:610 Writing:670) after two sittings. I took the SAT2 Physics and SAT2 Chemistry exams and got a 710 and 760 respectively. </p>

<p>I am positive that I want to transfer into a school with as much prestige as UC Davis. If possible, I'd also like to aim even higher.</p>

<p>Currently I'd like to transfer to any of the following colleges:</p>

<p>University of Chicago
University of California (any of the schools)
Cornell
Stanford
California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
Columbia
New York University
Tufts University
University of Southern California
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (although I understand this is incredibly difficult)</p>

<p>I have a particular affinity with California because I would like to live closer to my mentally ill mother. I also chose many school in Massachusetts because of the positive influences the communities brought upon me as I grew up in Boston. All the other schools on the list are schools with a familiar and comfortable Bostonian setting and an amazing Mathematics department.</p>

<p>Currently, all I have planned is to get amazing grades, possibly retake SATs, and build connections with professors as early as possible. </p>

<p>!!!!ANY Advice is very much appreciated.!!!!!</p>

<p>one important issue that I do want a lot of advice on is my peculiar highschool record. I took several upper division mathematics courses during highschool. The average mathematics student takes these courses around their 3rd year of college (but for the colleges I'm applying to, I'm sure you'll find a light sprinkle of students ranging from freshman to graduate in these courses). If these titles mean anything to you, the most recent courses I took are called:</p>

<p>Complex Analysis
Fourier Analysis
Mathematical Modeling
<em>These are all pure mathematics courses, not to be confused with engineering math courses with the same title</em></p>

<p>Since college is a fresh start in some sense, I was wondering if retaking these courses would hurt my chances to get into the schools I would like to transfer into. Should start where I left off in highschool? Should I retake the last couple of classes I took? Should I go back a step and start with courses before my senior year? Or maybe I should start with the average mathematics student and do extremely well?</p>

<p>!!!!ANY OTHER Advice is very much appreciated.!!!!!
!!!! Suggestions to transfer into other colleges are very much appreciated TOO!!!!</p>

2

<p>"I come from a public highschool and I received a 2.7 as my final gpa."</p>

<p>You have got to do something about your GPA. That means that you need to choose your courses carefully, and you need to be disciplined about your homework. Clearly, you weren't always disciplined about schoolwork in HS or you wouldn't have had a 2.7. When you review your transcript, do you see any consistent patterns (say A's in math and D's in English?). Did you only earn A's in courses where you liked the teacher, and earn D's in courses where you felt that the teacher didn't "get" you? A consistently unbalanced transcript is one of the indicators for learning disabilities - in particular for ADD. You may want to stroll by disability services at your new university and ask to be screened for Dyslexia (based on the difference between your math and reading/writing SAT scores) as well as ADD. One of my good friends didn't get her dyslexia identified until she was halfway through a Ph.D. program. If this is you, don't let yourself suffer as long as she did.</p>

<p>As to which math course you should be in in college, you need to sit down with your advisor there and discuss the best placement. No one here at CC is qualified to help you with that issue.</p>

<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>