Transfer Chances

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hey

I am looking to transfer to another university and was wondering if some of you can provide some insight about my chances. I am a second year international (Canada) university student. Since from the information in the post you can easily know who I am, I will just say that it is a university that is consistently ranked in the top 20-30 in the world. I am planning on applying as a transfer student to the following universities (it is a tentative list): Harvard, MIT, Caltech and Princeton.

I have all the necessary testing requirements and these are the scores I obtained in them:

High school GPA: 3.6
University first year GPA: 4.0

SAT with essay: 2320
Breakdown: M800 W760 CR760

SAT Subject Tests:
800 on Math 2, Chemistry, Biology, Physics

AP scores
5 in Calculus BC, Physics C: Mechanics, Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, Chemistry, and Biology

My university let me test out of certain courses because of the AP credit and what I had studied on my own, and so I was able to take some more advanced courses. In all cases I have taken the most rigorous courses available (my university offers courses on different levels like Calculus for Social Science majors and Calculus for Mathematics majors).

Courses

For these courses I either received credit for or did not have to take as a prerequisite for courses I actually took:
Single variable calculus
Multivariable Calculus
Linear Algebra
Classical Mechanics
Electricity and Magnetism

These are the courses I actually took:
Ordinary Differential Equations
Introduction to topology
Introduction to Real Analysis
Complex Analysis
Abstract algebra (groups, fields, rings etc)
Quantum Mechanics
Analytical Chemistry
Molecular and Cell Biology
Data Structures/Theory of Computation

I took a full course load both semesters of my first year and some of these courses were only 1 semester, so I was able to fit them in my schedule. I am taking a very difficult course load this semester as well and so far my marks are very good (we have finished our midterms so I have a good idea of where my marks stand). So when these grades are sent in February or March to the universities, I should still hopefully have as high of a GPA as I had in first year.

Other activities
Wrote the Putnam competition
Participated in research since high school and in first year
Tutoring
Significant volunteer work

There are some other activities I do but these are the main ones.

The letters of recommendation will be extremely good as I know them very well. I am also very confident that other parts of the application will be competitive.

2

I forgot to mention in the main post that I also received credit for the introductory 1 semester biology and chemistry courses. So I did not have to take them and was able to move on to Molecular and Cell Biology and Analytical Chemistry. The universities I am applying to as a transfer recommend taking a few courses in math, physics, chemistry, biology and computer science which I have done (although not at the first year level).

3

pretty sure princeton doesn’t do transfers.

4

The first question that pops to my mind is why transfer if you are in such a strong university already and doing well there? The universities you listed are all very difficult to transfer in to (and apparently impossible at Princeton). Also, you don’t mention your planned major but I assume it is engineering. If one of your goals is to get a graduate degree then perhaps you might wish to complete your Bachelor’s degree in Canada and then apply to the schools you list for a graduate program.

5

@awesomepolyglot @xraymancs

Thanks for letting me know. I researched the transfer application process for some of the schools but clearly forgot to even check if Princeton allows transferring students. My list was just tentative and I am considering other universities as well (such as the University of Chicago).

My planned major at this stage is mathematics and physics, although I am interested in other subjects (in particular computer science, chemistry and biology). Either way I have no plans of majoring in engineering.

I don’t have any issues at my current university but I think I will benefit much more by transferring (such as more research opportunities or higher level coursework). I am definitely planning on going to graduate school, so if I do not get accepted to any of these universities as a transfer student, I can consider them for graduate school.

6

OK, so if you are planning to major in physics, it looks like you have a good start on your coursework. If you transfer, it is not guaranteed that the other schools will accept the credit that you have at your current school. The means that you will probably lose a year if you transfer and have to take some courses over again. Furthermore, for physics, it is not clear that the curriculum will be any different at a new school (the physics undergraduate curriculum is fairly standard at all schools). If your current university is that highly ranked then it is likely that it has a Ph.D. program in physics and you should be able to take graduate courses to satisfy your desire for rigor. Getting involved in research should be easily possible and it should even be possible to get a Masters degree by the end of your time there.

Frankly, if graduate schools in your future, I would suggest getting all you can out of your current school and prepare yourself for admission to graduate school.

7

@xraymancs

I am not exactly sure how universities decide if I will be awarded credit for a specific course. However I have researched the syllabus of courses at those universities and they seem to cover similar material. So I would hope that I would be awarded credit for most of the courses in the event that I transfer. Even if I am set back a semester or two, I should still gain some credit from the AP courses or by giving some advanced standing exam (although I am not too sure about this).

My university does offer graduate programs in mathematics and physics so there are graduate courses available to me. The only issue I am facing with this is that there are very stringent requirements around taking graduate courses as an undergraduate. It isn’t very difficult to take the courses themselves, but they will not always count towards the credit I need to graduate.

Another reason for transferring is just a personal preference regarding the location. I’ve lived in Canada for most of my life and since I am planning on attending graduate school in the US, I might as well acclimatize to that country by now.

That being said, there isn’t any major issue at my university and it boasts that most of its graduates in my program (who want to go to graduate school) go on to attend prestigious universities such as MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Caltech etc.

I was also wondering, how much will my low high school GPA affect my chances? My university marks are good so I think they would offset it.

8

Yes, they would make a difference. I would still advise you to finish your B.S. as quickly as possible at your current university and put all of your efforts in preparing for a good graduate program. You will have 5-6 years to acclimate then. My son just finished his Ph.D. from UBC in Vancouver (not in physics though) having gone the other way. Everything worked out quite well and he has a good post-doc position in the U.S.

9

Thanks for the advice, @xraymancs, I will consider staying here more seriously. For some reason I had planned to transfer since I left high school, but there is nothing particularly dissatisfying here so I might just decide to finish off my undergraduate degree here.

10

Get a lot of research experience and you will set yourself up for a great graduate program.