Transfer Acceptance Rates at the Top 25 Schools (2011 CollegeBoard)

Transfer Students
1

<p>To underscore an earlier post I made of how hard transferring into top universities is, here is a list of transfer acceptance rates for 2011. As you can see, every top 12 school accepts less than 10% of transfer applicants. Most of these numbers have dropped since 2010, and I am 99.9% confident they are going to decrease even further in 2012. In other words, second chances at prestige are going to disappear in the near future. Unless you are already at a top 25 school, you can almost always write off any chances at top 12 colleges, even with perfect grades, stellar recommendations, and amazing extracurriculars.</p>

<p>There is good news. For students who failed to get into a top 25 school as a freshman, there are opportunities at redemption for transfers with high college grades. I'm talking about schools like Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, and Emory. You will notice most of these schools lie outside of the top 15, and their backdoors are shutting fast. I predict the "boundary" for transfer students will be pushed outside of the top 20 within the next 2 or 3 years, so you better apply for transfer while you still have a decent chance.</p>

<p>Below is a condensed list of the transfer acceptance rates, followed by a more detailed list with freshman acceptance rates, differential between freshman and transfer, and last year's transfer rate.</p>

<p>Harvard University: 1%
Princeton University: 0% (No transfers)
Yale University: 2%
Columbia University: 5%
California Institute of Technology: 6%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 9%
Stanford University: 4%
University of Chicago: 4%
University of Pennsylvania: 9%
Duke University: 2%
Dartmouth College: 3%
Northwestern University: 8%
Johns Hopkins University: 11%
Washington University in St. Louis: 7%
Brown University: 11%
Cornell University: 21% (Skewed due to guaranteed transfers)
Rice University: 20%
Vanderbilt University: 31%
University of Notre Dame: 40%
Emory University: 28%
University of California - Berkeley: 22%
Georgetown University: 11%
Carnegie Mellon University: 12%
University of Southern California: 25%
University of California - Los Angeles: 26%
University of Virginia: 35%
Wake Forest University: 26%</p>

<p>Detailed List:</p>

<p>Harvard University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 1% (15/1486)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 6%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -5%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 2%</p>

<p>Princeton University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 0% (No transfers)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 8%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -8%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 0%</p>

<p>Yale University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 2% (26/1072)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 8%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -6%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 5%</p>

<p>Columbia University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 5% (149/2660)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 7%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -2%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 7%</p>

<p>California Institute of Technology
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 6% (9/150)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 13%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -7%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 7%</p>

<p>Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 9% (44/443)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 10%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -1%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 4%</p>

<p>Stanford University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 4% (58/1413)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 7%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -3%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 2%</p>

<p>University of Chicago
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 4% (48/986)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 16%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -12%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 14%</p>

<p>University of Pennsylvania
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 9% (203/2099)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 12%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -3%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 15%</p>

<p>Duke University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 2% (26/920)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 14%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -12%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 9%</p>

<p>Dartmouth College
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 3% (28/861)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 10%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -7%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 4%</p>

<p>Northwestern University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 8% (130/1521)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 18%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -10%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 11%</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 11% (116/1018)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 18%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -7%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 10%</p>

<p>Washington University in St. Louis
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 7% (105/1435)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 17%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -10%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 9%</p>

<p>Brown University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 11% (214/1904)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 9%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: +2% (!!!!!!!)
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 11%</p>

<p>Cornell University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 21% (Skewed due to guaranteed transfers)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 18%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: +3%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 22%</p>

<p>Rice University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 20% (108/540)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 19%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: +1%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 26%</p>

<p>Vanderbilt University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 31% (366/1151)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 16%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: +15% (Backdoors into the top 25 begin here)
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 41%</p>

<p>University of Notre Dame
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 40% (147/364)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 24%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: +16% (Another backdoor)
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 37%</p>

<p>Emory University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 28% (260/912)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 27%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: +1%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 36%</p>

<p>University of California - Berkeley
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 22% (3590/16026)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 22%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: 0%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 23%</p>

<p>Georgetown University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 11% (222/1986)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 18%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -7%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 23%</p>

<p>Carnegie Mellon University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 12% (84/676)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 30%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -18%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 17%</p>

<p>University of Southern California
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 25% (2524/9742)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 23%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: +2%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 27%</p>

<p>University of California - Los Angeles
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 26% (5298/19786)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 26%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: 0%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 29%</p>

<p>University of Virginia
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 35% (858/2393)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 33%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: +2%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 40%</p>

<p>Wake Forest University
2011 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 26% (98/367)
2011 Freshman Acceptance Rate: 40%
Transfer and Freshman Difference: -14%
2010 Transfer Acceptance Rate: 30%</p>

2

<p>I will forgo any comments on rankings, to each his own.</p>

<p>A couple more caveats to this data:</p>

<p>Publics are skewed as they include both IS and OOS numbers.</p>

<p>Brown is skewed as it has need aware admissions for transfers and these numbers include both candidates who apply for FA and those that don’t.</p>

3

<p>University of Michigan isn’t on that list! Does anyone know the transfer statistics for UM?</p>

4

<p>Hey, looks like word got out that Notre Dame and Vandy high have acceptance rates for transfers due to having relatively low numbers of transfer applicants to begin with. Watch those acceptance rates plummet as more people take advantage of those “back doors.”</p>

5

<p>coolapple, go to the school’s Common Data Set or the CB College Search function for transfer rates for ANY school (that releases their admissions data).</p>

6

<p>What kind of top 25 is this without UofMichigan?</p>

7

<p>US N&WR has UMichigan at 28 this year; but like I said earlier, it’s just a ranking.</p>

8

<p>9% for MIT? That’s incredibly high for MIT. o_o Well, perhaps it was a generous year.</p>

9

<p>Well, this is depressing, but it’s reality. Remember, if you don’t make it as a transfer student, there is always grad school!</p>

10

<p>Two updates for the 2012 transfer admit cycle:</p>

<p>UChicago’s transfer admit rate dropped below 2%. The student paper the Maroon reported UChicago accepted only 20 transfer applicants. The number of applicants wasn’t stated, but last year about 1,000 people applied. There was a 16.2% jump in first-year admissions, so it’s likely transfer applications rose at well. That means at most UChicago had a 2% transfer admit rate and most likely a tad under 2%:
[Large</a> admitted class forces adjustments on College – The Chicago Maroon](<a href=“Saul Bellow, dead at 89 – Chicago Maroon”>Saul Bellow, dead at 89 – Chicago Maroon)</p>

<p>Stanford reported a 2.2% transfer acceptance rate, accepting 33 of 1,500 applicants:
[Transfer</a> class cut by nearly half to compensate for high yield rate | Stanford Daily](<a href=“http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/05/16/1066478/]Transfer”>Transfer class cut by nearly half to compensate for high yield rate)</p>

11

<p>I’m not entirely sure some of these “back doors” are entirely accidental. What some schools have discovered is that they can accept fewer first year students to appear more selective and make up for it by accepting a zillion transfer students. This would seem to be the case for a school like Vanderbilt that has a MUCH higher transfer admit rate than its first year admit rate. You’ll notice most schools have a much LOWER transfer admit rate than first year admit rate.</p>

<p>Also, Northwestern specifically announced it is going to accept fewer first year students and more transfers students. (A lower first-year admit rate helps boost your ranking; the rankings don’t consider transfer admit rate so it’s another way to game the system:</p>

<p>[</a>" + artTitle.replace(“-”,“”) + " - " + “The Daily Northwestern” + " - " + “Campus” + "](<a href=“http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/mobile/campus/northwestern-to-decrease-acceptances-for-incoming-freshmen-1.2702254]”>http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/mobile/campus/northwestern-to-decrease-acceptances-for-incoming-freshmen-1.2702254)</p>

12

<p>

</p>

<p>As a former transfer student myself, I have been thinking about transfer admissions for a long while. My conclusion: The backdoors are very intentional. Vanderbilt has developed a reputation for being a transfer-friendly school, which people sometimes interpret as being a backdoor. Vanderbilt, like Brown, reserves the right to be need-aware for transfer students. Since transfer students often stay for three years or less, you can see why admitting more freshmen instead draws in more revenue. On the other hand, transfer students with high EFCs are still chosen over freshmen with low EFCs because they can pay the bill. Many schools ignore their need-blind admission policy when dealing with transfers. While freshmen admissions are often need-blind, no one said anything about comparing freshmen to transfers.</p>

<p>In other words, competitive transfers are wild cards. In addition to their main role of filling designated quotas for funding, they can be used to add any type of diversity (international, racial, major, geographical) and increase the school’s revenue, all while making the school appear a little bit more competitive than natural. Transfer grades are often omitted from the average admitted GPA, and their SAT scores are often left out as well. For every amazing transfer student, a school can cut out a less appealing freshman, whether they add too little diversity to the campus, their grades were below average, or most important of all, their family is in a low income bracket.</p>

<p>I do note the difference is somewhat negligible. In Northwestern’s case, swapping 80 freshmen for transfers is not going to change the statistics by very much when you have 2000 freshmen enrolling every year anyway. Even Vanderbilt would remain more or less the same by cutting down on transfer admissions. On the other hand, schools showing extreme deficiency in a particular category (for example, Notre Dame’s Asian-American population) can suck up Asian transfers to play the statistics game. </p>

<p>I believe the negative effects of enrolling more transfers has more to do with prestige, due to applicants trying to game the system. Rising freshmen who did poor in high school are always looking for a second chance, as seen a lot on this very forum, myself included. The most competitive colleges want to give the impression their doors are sealed after freshman admission, or otherwise everyone and their siblings would be applying to transfer into a top-tier university. Yet they leave the door just the least bit open so they can suck up transfer application fees and admit wealthy, well-connected students. Of course, they have to admit transfer students with high grades as well, or otherwise people would notice the low average college GPAs of transfers. The low transfer acceptance rates of the top 13 are very much intended to dissuade freshmen in lower-ranked colleges from submitting the Transfer Common Application to any top 13 school. And yet so many people try to transfer anyway. Unless you can bring money, diversity, near-perfect grades, or any combination of the three (most of all MONEY), I would just avoid applying in the first place.</p>

<p>Colleges like Vanderbilt, Emory, Rice, and Notre Dame are just a little lower ranked than their top 15 counterparts; thus, they can get away with admitting more transfer students, and reap the slight benefits they come with. Even so, no self-respecting top-tier school wants to be known as the transfer backdoor to prestige. I figure in the face of so many super-competitive freshman applicants, even Vanderbilt will have to start slashing their transfer acceptance rates to match their first-year percentages.</p>

<p>Ugh, just daydreamed in my own thread.</p>

13

<p>@sometransfer enjoyed your comments!</p>

<p>Most top schools haven’t yet announced their 2012 figures, but a few have: Harvard, Stanford, and sort of UChicago. Most likely the rate has dropped a bit at the other schools as well. So this is a combination of 2012 and 2011 transfer rates. Does anybody have 2012 figure schools for schools other than UChicago, Harvard, and Stanford?</p>

<p>Transfer Admit Rates:</p>

<p>Harvard University: 1% (15/1448)
University of Chicago: 2% (20/1000)
Stanford University: 2.2% (33/1500)
Yale University: 2.7% (29/1072)
Duke University: 2.8% (26/920)
Dartmouth College: 3.3% (28/861)
Columbia University: 5.6% (149/2660)
California Institute of Technology: 6% (9/150)
Washington University in St. Louis: 7.3% (105/1435)
Northwestern University: 8.5% (130/1521)
University of Pennsylvania: 9.7% (203/2099)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 9.9% (44/443)
Georgetown: 11.1% (222/1986)
Brown University: 11.2% (214/1904)
Johns Hopkins University: 11.4% (116/1018)
Carnegie Mellon University: 12%
Rice University: 20%
Cornell University: 21% (Skewed due to guaranteed transfers)
University of California - Berkeley: 22%
University of Southern California: 25%
University of California - Los Angeles: 26%
Wake Forest University: 26%
Emory University: 28%
Vanderbilt University: 31%
University of Virginia: 35%
University of Notre Dame: 40%</p>

<p>The Maroon reported UChicago accepted 20 transfer students this year. However, they didn’t mention the total number of apps, so I used last year’s number. Because of the rise in first-year applications, it’s likely that transfer applications rose as well. The College Board and Dept. of Education will release figures for most schools later this year so eventually we’ll know the full picture.</p>

<p>But this gives you a rough guide…</p>

14

<p>Do not trust College Board transfer rates, they are a little off. You should look at the D section of the school’s common data set.</p>

15

<p>College Board uses Common Data Sets. My sole concern is how they round down percentages even when they are more than halfway to the next percentage, but whatever.</p>

16

<p>some of the transfer rates for some colleges aren’t updated</p>

17

<p>Harvard and Stanford have been updated for 2012. UChicago is 50% updated for–number of acceptances (2012) but not applications (2011.) Other schools are 2011. will update once known.</p>

18

<p>Wow. These acceptance rates are quite sobering. I just finished my freshman year at Penn CAS and am planning on applying for transfer next year at harvard, yale, stanford, mit, columbia, and brown. I guess my “best” chances are at mit and brown. Harvard is virtually impossible; i mean what type of people make the 1% cut?</p>

19

<p>

</p>

<p>After the less qualified transfer applicants are sent their letters of rejection, Harvard admissions puts the names of all competitive students in a giant bag and selects 15 at random. True story.</p>

20

<p>^ I thought it was pin them on the walls, blindfold themselves, and throw darts.</p>