i’m an incoming freshman and carnegie mellon’s school of computer science (and will likely double major in math as well) who is looking to transfer as a sophomore. I did not apply as a freshman.
Basic stats: fairly wealthy asian male. 3.93 UW Gpa in HS. Essentially perfect testing with tons of APs and SAT2s. Took Lin alg and Diffy eq at a local uni, multivariable Calc dual-enrollment, a prob/star class online, and 3 coursera CS classes as well.
Main thing I had going for me was that I was pretty good at math. I qualified for USAMO senior year (top 250 in math nationwide); USAMO qualifiers have a 90% acceptance rate to at least one of HYPSM. I also did well in other prestigious math competitions, and was an alternate to RSI. The rest of my extracurriculars were fairly impressive, but nothing special for a school of yale’s caliber. The main factors that held back my application were that I was not in the top 10% of my class at a good but not extraordinary public school, and that my grades junior year were pretty bad after getting a 4.0 freshman and sophomore years. This made it seem like I had a downwards trend, but thankfully senior year I got nearly perfect grades,
I’m looking to transfer to yale (as well as stanford (rejected), harvard (waitlisted), USC (didn’t apply), UC Berkeley (didn’t apply), brown (didn’t apply), and Cornell (accepted)) because I have a lot more interest in humanities (especially econ, business and international/middle eastern affairs) than I did when applying to colleges last year and do not think I can stand the geeky and academically super-intense atmosphere at CMU for four more years.
I know my chances are likely slim (at least for yale harvard and Stanford), and I am also looking for advice for this process. In particular, I’m wondering how to show my interest in econ and business when I will be unable to take any econ or business classes as a freshman.
No matter what college you apply to as a transfer applicant, Admissions is going to value your college transcript and professor’s recommendations over your high school GPA or AP scores or SAT/ACT scores. So, forget about everything you have done in high school. What matters now is everything you are about to do at Carnegie Mellon.
You need to pick demanding courses at Carnegie Mellon. You need to ace every class with a grade not less than an A-. You need to take small classes, where a professor can personally get to know you so they can write you a stellar letter of recommendation. You need to involve yourself in extracurricular life at Carnegie Mellon so that you can prove that as a transfer student you would be a valuable asset to campus life.
And you need to think about what Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Cornell would offer you that you cannot get from Carnegie Mellon. I happen to like Yale’s wording on their transfer page.
And this from Harvard
Given that Carnegie Mellon is a world-class institution, all of the above will be tremendously difficult to do if you don’t enjoy your experience there. So, my suggestion is to embrace Carnegie Mellon – it’s a wonderful college. Be open to the possibility that Carnegie Mellon graduates do well in life. And you will too by graduating from CMU!
Lastly, a true story that I’ve written about before
I really don’t understand the “need” to transfer from CMU which is a great school, which offers opportunities to do pretty much anything you want. You need to really embrace the opportunities there; sure, if you really feel the need (why?) to apply to transfer, then do it, but you should really be focusing on taking advantage of what you’ve already got.