<p>After completing my freshman year at Carleton, I have decided to consider transferring. </p>
<p>My undergraduate goals include: pursue a major involving Government, Economics, and/or Philosophy, while achieving relative fluency in Mandarin Chinese and admission to a top 20 law school.</p>
<p>Though I find Carleton supportive and challenging, I am concerned that the personality of the school doesn't fit. To be honest I am sick of attending a school that insists on celebrating quirkiness (which I have found to mean apathy towards physical appearance and celebration of anything unusual) with no name recognition, and few famous alumni.</p>
<p>I am considering transferring to: (in order of preference)
LAC: Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Pomona
Big Universities: Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown, Georgetown </p>
<p>I've participated in and have done very well in prestigious government activities (Boys Nation, Senate Internships) Unfortunately I am afraid that I am stuck at Carleton, largely because of my stats. I don't think I could have worked any harder this past year, yet I received a 3.5 GPA. Plus my standardized test scores are not that great (27 ACT).</p>
<p>My questions are:<br>
Do I even have a chance at transferring to any of the above institutions?
Is transferring worth all of the time it would take away from my studies?
Could I still achieve my goal (admission to top 20 law school) at Carleton?</p>
<ol>
<li>yes, if you can get high marks for the rest of your time at carleton before you transfer</li>
<li>it won’t take that long if you start now. what takes the most time is essays, which you can start drafting while you’re on break</li>
<li>definitely</li>
</ol>
<p>Another thing you need to consider is financial aid and/or merit money if you’re currently getting them at Carleton. FA packages for transfer students are seldom as good as they are for freshmen applicants and the places on your transfer list by and large don’t have merit aid to begin with, let alone merit aid available for transfers.</p>
<p>And yes, you can certainly earn admission to a top 20 law school if you stay at Carleton. Admission to a top 20 law school requires a top notch LSAT score plus a great undergraduate GPA. The name of the school on the diploma is usually not that important. Your current gpa is very good for a freshman and your grades should improve by the time you’re a junior. So if you stay at Carleton, work hard, try to keep the grades up, and take the time to properly prepare for the LSAT, which you’ll take as either a second semester junior or a first semester senior.</p>
<p>i think you are underestimating carleton’s name recognition. i am from minnesota but work in nyc and people always praise carleton as a top tier lac. if they only know one thing about minnesota it is usually carleton. you should be looking at t10 law schools instead of t20 if you graduate from carleton with a sparkling gpa.</p>
<p>There are two kinds of people-- those who recognize the names of top LACs and those who don’t. A large portion of those who don’t recognize LACs names, will recognize the name of the local state U, but that’s not what you want, right? I don’t think you’d get a whole lot more name recognition from Williams or Amherst than you would Carleton.</p>
<p>If you really want to transfer, then you will want to expand your search. The LACs have low acceptance rates for transfer students (Bowdoin has about a 5% acceptance rates and other colleges are similar). </p>