Transfer 2020 Advice?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rice University
1

Hi, I am a student currently at a city college within California. I’d love to hear some advice about how to be a better candidate so I can have at least a bit of a successful chance to transfer into Rice University. I’ve tried looking everywhere for this type of content, but it seems there is none. I also know that Rice barely takes in transfer students, so I have other schools in mind, but I can also apply this advice to the other universities as well for the upcoming admission.

Also, I am a premed looking into transferring in as a biochem, neuroscience, or a chemistry major focusing on organic chemistry. I’ve also recently transferred out of a UC school for my own personal reasons, and I think I can explain my situation very well within the essay and also how Rice would be a good fit for me and why I would like to transfer there.

Here’s a little about what I am doing:

Teaching/Volunteering at a Physical Therapy/Occupational Therapy Clinic for Special Needs Children; teaching them how not only physical fitness matters, but discipline and also how to be independent for their future

Volunteer at a local hospital of mine (urban area/
underserved environment); get a lot of patient contact, learn to interact with the patients, move the patients if CNA’s need help, help the nurses with minimal tasks (fetching patient food, setting up rooms, etc)

Future SI: Tutor at my city college for organic chemistry (first part of organic chemistry)

Future (maybe) ER medical scribe: I’ve just done an interview for this position, do not know if I have gotten in yet. If I do get the position, I am looking forward to how I’ll be interacting with either a PA or a Physician, how they interact with patients, what goes on in the emergency department, the medical terms that I’ll hear frequently.

Shadowing a Trauma Surgeon at near by hospital: Doing this in a few weeks, looking forward to physician contact, seeing how he interacts with patients, and also the procedures done within trauma surgery.

Research: still trying to find research; ill most likely get a research opportunity soon at my local hospital, may have a chance to have research within surgery.

This is what I’m doing so far and also what I’ll be doing within the near future. I might need some leadership experience, but I also have the SI tutoring to help me complete that leadership quality. I was also thinking of doing non-clinical volunteering such as feeding the homeless (since I live in an underserved community) and also being a mentor for a child in middle school or high school.

2

Honestly, it’s quite difficult to say how to convince admissions to get you into Rice. They could be looking for something different in each applicant and, as you said, they barely admit any transfer students. So just about everything is a crapshoot. It appears you’re trying to do all you can do to bolster your application, and I’ll just try to list out some other things that you can try to add to the list.

  1. Maintaining a high GPA. Pretty self explanatory. They say “competitive” applicants are above a 3.5, but you probably want above a 3.7 to get admissions to take a hard look at your application.

  2. Participating in an extracurricular outside of your interest. You have a very large amount of extracurriculars related to healthcare, and that’s obviously really good, because it’s relevant to your interest in the medical fields. However, a lot of Rice students are well-rounded and have a wide variety of interests/extracurriculars. For example, a student in engineering may also participate in triathlons. In another example, a student studying math may run a small business on the side. These are extreme examples, but if you have anything such as publications, musical performances, or really anything not related to medicine (or more preferably, not related to a hard science at all), you should add that in. I think being a mentor would be a great example, depending on for what you are mentoring the child.

  3. Essays. The big one is why you want to transfer to Rice. I will tell you straight up, if your whole intent is for prestige, admissions probably won’t care. Everyone wants to go to a good school for prestige, and any school is prestigious in their own regard. What specifically at Rice makes you want to attend there and not any other school? You mention you can write about that aspect, so really hone in on those reasons you want to go to Rice. By the time you’re done with your essay, you want someone to be able to read your essay and be convinced that there is no other school that you should go to other than Rice. Also keep in mind that for pre-med, the undergrad name has only marginal benefits. A 3.8 GPA at Rice will probably not look a whole lot better than a 3.8 at, say, University of St. Thomas. There are so many factors that medical schools consider that as long as you meet the GPA threshold, they’ll probably just gloss over whatever school you went to and look at all the other stuff in your application.

3

“Essays. The big one is why you want to transfer to Rice.”

Just wanted to make clear that the Why Transfer essay is no longer included in the Rice transfer application. But great advice overall!

OP, I transferred from a city college to Rice. Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions!