I am reposting this thread here because I think I will get more opinions in this specific forum than the “What are my chances” forum which is mainly for freshmen admissions. My first choice (assuming I get accepted to any of these) is also MIT, so it makes more sense to post it here. I apologize if it is against the rules.
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.