<p>I'm graduating high school and attending a state school (SUNY Stony Brook) in the fall. The reason for this is NYU, UC Berkeley, and Boston U gave relatively little financial aid. I really hate the idea that I'm staying home for college for a year so I plan on transferring to a school that's a better fit for me and farther away. I'm also not in the honors program at Stony Brook because I applied after the fact that I found out I couldn't afford any of the colleges I got accepted to, in April. I'm going to re-take the SAT and maybe take the ACT (currently have a 2170 but want to be as competitive as an applicant as can be so I'm not staying home for more than a year). My unweighted GPA in high school was around a 94/95. Stony Brook is a decent school I guess, but not as good as places like Berkeley. How good are my chances of transferring to schools like Berkeley, McGill, and U. Chicago from a freshman at this state school? I'm going to work really hard to strengthen my application this year because I understand that it could be harder to transfer to these schools. Also, does anyone have any other suggestions of schools I could apply to that are good for linguistics/aren't absolutely impossible to transfer to (like most of the Ivy League schools). I was thinking about Cornell though... </p>
<p>Any feedback/suggestions/comments would be appreciated.</p>
<p>just try not to get too far ahead of yourself, absolutely make sure you concentrate on getting at least a 3.5 (AT LEAST) and you’ll probably be golden,</p>
<p>It’s very hard to get into Berkeley because they heavily favor their in-state CC applicants. UChicago is just flat out tough unless you’re applying from a top 30 with a high GPA. You should try Emory and Vanderbilt, although by no means are they guarantees.</p>
<p>danielise, I don’t mean to discourage you but I don’t think UC Berkeley will give you much better aid than they gave you when you were accepted as a HS senior. I read that they are going to be accepting more OOS transfer students in the future so that the students can pay full OOS costs, but that they still won’t grant much institutional aid to non-California residents.</p>
<p>I was interested in transferring to Berkeley too because the courses I’ve taken would transfer easily, but when I found out about how abysmal the financial aid was for OOS students, I decided not to waste time applying. </p>
<p>I’m sure Chicago, on the other hand, would meet your full need with a great financial aid package if you got accepted. </p>
<p>I’d say you’re in at Berkeley and McGill based on your HS credentials with a 3.7+ college GPA at Stony Brook and you’ll have a shot at Chicago with a 4.0 GPA in your freshman year at Stony Brook.</p>
<p>I have no idea what McGill’s financial aid is like, but the linguistics program there is one of the best and your high school GPA and SAT scores are a fit.</p>
<p>Thank you for all of your inputs. I am aware that Berkeley would not give better financial aid the second time around, but it’s at least better to pay 2 or 3 years of OOS tuition than 4 years. And I’m going to save as much money as possible this year and my parents are now aware of my plan. I’m also going to be applying for scholarships year round. You never know what could happen. My family got hit really hard, as many did, with the terrible economy, and our income went down about 30K (because my dad’s main income came from his own business.) It’s worth a shot, I’d say. </p>
<p>And although this probably wouldn’t happen for my parents would not allow it, but would it make some sense to go to Berkeley for the year and then transfer to a better school with better financial aid?..like U.Chicago or something? I think I’d have a better chance transferring from UCB than Stony Brook, right? (Although I know this is not an overall wise risk to take, at least according to my parents lol…I would do it in a heartbeat.)</p>