So I had a rough college application results. My GPA wasn’t the best due to some family and health issues and I am ending up going to the College of Idaho, a pretty much unknown small liberal arts school. I have had some thoughts about transferring for a bit and even though it is not necesarilly my plan, I was wondering if you guys could help me out with learning about transferring and where to transfer
I have two primary career fields in mind. I am really interested in biochemistry and my school only has one lab of interest dedicated to biochemistry with topics not of great interest to me. Something important to me would be access to more research facilities with just more labs to work in. Also having more electives in biochemistry related fields as well.
Also my other interest is public policy. My school doesn’t have a public policy major, but has political economy, which is pretty much just poli sci. The major is entirely conceptual, not quantitative. This doesn’t really help for looking towards a career in policy. The school lacks serious an actual economics program too. Also Idaho is conductive to internships in liberal policy work as well which would be helpful for me.
Essentially those are my two major fields of interest so I would like to transfer to a school that has a decent program in both. Probably in a year or two, I will have narrowed myself down to one of those two fields, but I need some flexibility. I would like to be able to double major with those, but that isn’t a requirement.
Also my college is close to Boise, the “urban” part of Idaho, but I wouldn’t mind somewhere bigger and more liberal.
Most importantly, I don’t know much about transferring. Do all credits transfer usually? Should I take classes that I know will transfer? Also will my high school transcript and test scores matter. My UW GPA is 3.6, W GPA is 3.9, and I have a 31 ACT, superscored 32. Also will extracurriculars matter? I am going to be doing college debate so I hope that could potentially help. Also I am not sure to determine what could potentially be realistic and what to consider would be reaches, matches, and safeties. Pretty much I just don’t know stuff to transfer since there are a lot less online resources to get tips and stats for it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I always recommend that students in your position really try to make that first college work for them, and not to focus entirely on transferring, if only because doing this can help you do better at this first college, which can help you transfer “up”. Second, because you may end up not transferring (you may find you like this school, or that your grades aren’t strong enough for your first choice, or…) So when you get to campus, get involved there. Try to make their science programs work for you. See if you can’t combine the poli sci type classes with some econ/stats/math classes. If they don’t offer all the classes you need, see if there are summer programs elsewhere that do. Do internships related to future careers. Get involved in a professor’s research, even if it doesn’t entirely coincide with your own interests. If nothing else, doing these things will help you transfer.
It’s not the case that all credits will transfer. Whether or not a course transfers depends on if the new school offers that class, and if they feel that your version is the exact same as theirs. I often see that “general” classes transfer, but classes related to your major can be iffy - they may not transfer, or if they do, they transfer as electives rather than as major classes, or etc.
ECs can matter. It depends on the college you want to transfer to. Whether or not they ask for your HS records, again, depends on the college, and sometimes on how many college classes you’ve taken when you apply.
Once you have an idea of which colleges you may want to transfer to, you can go to their websites to look up their transfer admissions requirements.
Where did you apply so that the only admit you have is College of Idaho? Did you have serious geographic or financial rstrictions? Or did you just apply to a bunch of very selective places? Your GPA and ACT score would make you an automatic admit and guarantee you excellent merit-based aid at many of the places on the Automatic Full Tuition and Full Ride thread in the Financial Aid Forum. Read through that list. Think about taking a gap year.
@IDaho11
How is it going for you at the College of Idaho? Are you still planning to transfer?
I really love being in college, but I definetly don’t want to be at this school long term. In retrospect placing an emphasis on mental illness advocacy from personal experience was a blender on my part in my application.
I am trying to make a list for transferring but I honestly don’t know what would be a realistic list. Mostly I am trying to get as high of a GPA as I can right now