I’m a business administration major at a local community college in south-eastern PA, near Philly. I have a good GPA of 3.87. And I could finish off my AS degree by this summer of '12. Though I was thinking of transferring to Temple University after the end of the spring semester, into their accounting program.
The problem is before attending community college, I was a student at another public 4 year school (as an engineering major). I was placed in academic probation there. And 30 credits of my AS degree are transfer credits from this institution. So would this past history of probation hinder my chances of being accepted into Temple?
It may be a factor but not the biggest thing. They will probably note it on your transcript (transfers want you to send transcripts from EVERY college you attended). If your present things such as GPA, EC and essays are good it wont matter. According to Collegeboard,
Admission requirements:
Essay(s) required
Required: SAT Reasoning Test or ACT
If submitting ACT, the writing section is required
Very important admission factors:
Rigor of secondary school record
Academic GPA
Important admission factors:
Class Rank
Standardized Test Scores
Considered:
Alumni Relation
Character/Personal Qualities
Application Essay
Extracurricular Activities
Recommendations
Talent/Ability
Volunteer Work
Work Experience
I hesitate to reply, because I have no personal experience with this, but I think they are more concerned with your chances of success going forward, and your CC record offers good assurance of that. You could speak with an admissions counselor at Temple and ask – you have nothing to hide.
Think about what it was that made the difference, and will be different going forward, so that you can sell them on your odds of continued success after transferring. Perhaps engineering was not for you but accounting is, perhaps you are more mature now, perhaps being away at 18 was too distracting. Perhaps you feel you learned a hard, expensive lesson when the first school didn’t work out, and you have since showed the determination to avoid that in the future.
Temple is a big, public school and probably does its admissions mostly on the numbers, but at a smaller school, admissions is often more individualized. If Temple isn’t in a position to take these personal factors into consideration, other schools might. I think they’d far rather have a junior coming in who has the proven ability to finish the program, and will to take the place of somebody else who came in as a freshman and washed out, than to be too concerned with what happened years ago that is not likely to happen again.