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 was waitlisted as a freshman applicant.
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,
With my much better results in math competitions senior year, slightly higher gpa, and reversal of my downwards trend, my application is stronger than it was a year ago, but transfer admissions is far more competitive.
I’m looking to transfer to Harvard (as well as stanford (rejected), yale (didn’t apply), 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 to by graduating from CMU!
Lastly, a true story that I’ve written about before
I am taking as rigorous courses as I can, and will obviously try to do my best. However, I thought for sophomore transfer, HS achievements/transcripts pay a significant weight still. After all, I only have 1 semester at CMU, it is difficult to accomplish much in that time.
Also do you know how I should show my interest in humanities in the absence of classes?
Please revisit the transfer admissions pages of Harvard and Yale and reread what Admissions is looking for from a transfer applicant. Both schools ask for a copy of your HS transcript and SAT/ACT scores. However, neither Harvard or Yale is interested in having your HS guidance counselor submit a secondary school report (SSR), or having your HS teachers write recommendations on your behalf, or about your participation in EC’s in high school. You could have been a stellar student in high school, but that doesn’t tell a college what kind of student you are now at CMU.
I haven’t a clue besides passion, dedication, and commitment – and that would mean humanities courses and extracurricular activities related to humanities. After all a college isn’t going to take a student’s interest in humanities seriously if they just have taken math and science courses at their current college and haven’t explored, or exhausted, the options in humanities.
That’s the difficulty of sophomore transfers at every college. So, you’ve got to hit the ground running.
Most colleges including Harvard and Yale do actually ask you to submit a secondary school report as a transfer student. It may not be listed on the website but it is listed on the online checklist you get once you apply. Also some students who were accepted to Harvard as transfer students posted on the forum that their high school guidance counselors were contacted by Harvard during the transfer process. You are also allowed to submit EC’s from 11th grade onward via the common app. So I would say that your high school performance does have a good amount of weight (especially as a potential incoming sophomore) on their decisions.
UC Berkeley only accepts Junior level transfers with 60 semester/90 quarter units. It may be possible as a Sophomore if you have a lot of AP credit but do not count on it.
I hope you are more honest with yourself than you are with us. What you wrote isn't exactly credible. You have a lot more interest in [a bunch of non-humanities subjects that are taught everywhere, and that you don't seem to know aren't "humanities"] than you did three months ago when you picked CMU over Cornell? You can't stand an atmosphere anymore you haven't actually experienced yet?
I really hate to say it, but this is like a little textbook in how to take a great resume and turn it into a terrible application. The only message you send is that you don’t give a crap about anything except rankings.
You are going to be spending at least one academic year at one of the best colleges on the planet for computer science -- clearly seen as better for that than any of your prospective transfer destinations except Stanford. Why would anyone even think of admitting you as a transfer student at one of those colleges unless you show you know how to get the most out of a great faculty? Forget demonstrating your interest in the humanities -- that may work as a functional explanation for why you want to transfer, but it's not going to impress anyone at Harvard or Yale, given that they already have scores of students who have been living the humanities they way you have been living math for most of their lives. Demonstrate that you are a world-beating student by finding the best and the brightest at CMUCS and sucking them dry (not to mention getting them to support your transfer application).
As a bonus, there’s more than a chance that (a) you will find that you LIKE the atmosphere at CMU and it’s a great place for you, and/or (b) if you are not successful in transferring, you will be on your way to a super-successful career at CMU and beyond. That’s a far better bet than transferring to HYS.
And stay at the front of the pack in math. In the end, if you are successful transferring, it is probably going to be because you are one of the top math students in your cohort, not because anyone is going to take pity on poor you and your newfound humanities interests stuck in the geeky atmosphere of CMU. Newsflash: your best skills are geeky skills. You will have a much stronger transfer application if you implicitly promise to stay geeky. Objectively, what are the odds that you achieve something interesting in Middle Eastern relations vs. mathematics or computer science?