Hello!
I am an international freshman student at University of Toronto. I am interested in pursuing cognitive science and computer science. I have been considering to transfer to Brown university because it is a medium sized university, and I saw Brown’s cognitive science program and researches and I think there would be more opportunities for me there.
Any advice on how should I build my transfer application? My sat was 1460, sat bio and math subjects were 770 and 720 respectively. Should I retake the sat? What should I do about my extracurriculars?
I (First-Year at Brown, Class of 2024) responded to a similar post yesterday so I’m going to edit that response here rather than type it all out again lol.
Brown’s transfer rate was unusually low this year (3.4% vs. 9.4% and 7.4% the 2 previous application cycles,) though this may be due to Admissions purposefully over-enrolling the freshman class ('24) by 100 students. Your high school grades and test scores will still be considered, but a high college GPA may partially offset them.
Do you require financial aid? Brown is need-aware for international transfer students, but does meet your full demonstrated need (as the FA Office calculates it) if admitted. Here is further information about the FA process: https://admission.brown.edu/international/financial-aid
If 110% interested in transferring out of your current school, it’s important to apply widely (safeties, matches, and reaches,) just as with freshmen college admissions. If not, it’s fine to only apply to reaches----as long as you’d be happy with remaining at your current university if not admitted to any.
Admissions provides some helpful information on the transfer admissions process and the criteria utilized to evaluate applicants: https://admission.brown.edu/transfer/candidates
The Open Curriculum is key to the academic experience at Brown----just as Columbia is set apart from other schools by its Core. Admissions is looking for students with genuine interests in multiple fields who will take advantage of the opportunities at Brown, just as they have at their home university or high school. Departmental websites are a good starting point, as well as any conversations you may have had with Brown faculty or alumni.
Why do you want to transfer?
As others have mentioned, transferring into Brown is a long shot for the strongest students. They accept very few transfer students. You can certainly apply, however, you should think of it as a high reach.
I do not think that it makes any sense to retake the SAT now that you are already a university student. Your SAT scores are very good. However, given how strong Toronto is for cognitive and computer sciences, your SAT scores are only sort of “okay” for the tiny handful of universities that anyone might think are stronger than Toronto (if there even are any universities stronger than Toronto).
I do think that you should try hard to keep your grades up both because this might help your attempt to transfer and also because it will help whatever else you want to do if you do not transfer. If you can both get high grades and get to know your professors this might help to open up opportunities at Toronto, such as internships or coop or research opportunities.
Usually transferring into the very top ranked universities is more likely if you have a very strong reason to transfer. Given how strong Toronto is in your likely majors, it might be hard to make this case unless the environment in Toronto (eg, big university) is not what you want.
I am a bit worried that you might succeed in transferring, and then discover that it was a mistake.