I’m about to start my first year at USC and I’m already thinking about transferring. I know that it’s early and I don’t know much about the school but during visits and events, I just didn’t feel like I belonged there. It’s also too close to home, far to expensive for me to dorm, not the best for my major/interests, and the community didn’t feel right for me.
I’m planning on applying as a transfer to the Ivies, some liberal arts schools, Barnard, and Stanford. I know it it near impossible but I also don’t think I’m losing anything by trying.
I’d really appreciate some advice on how I should go about doing all of this within the next year (or two).
For some additional information, I chose usc over other schools while applying because I impulsively thought I’d have a career in film. However, I’ll be majoring in political science and data or computer science instead. I applied test optional and had a gpa of 4.18.
Questions:
Is it more beneficial to transfer as a freshman or sophomore?
How do I build relationships for letters or recommendation?
Can I list my high school extracurriculars in the application (in addition to new involvements)?
And please, any advice?
Thank you and I appreciate any advice you could give!
My suggestion to you…you need to embrace your spot at USC….go in with the attitude that you are going to make the most of this acceptance. Find some ways to get involved in some clubs or whatever. Enjoy your classes, meet people, etc.
If you still feel you want to transfer, then fine…but do be realistic about where you are planning to apply. If you apply for transfer to start your sophomore year of college, your high school recorded will be used…because you won’t even have a college one when you apply.
I am assuming that by “USC” you mean “Southern California” rather than “South Carolina”. I am trying to properly understand your reason for wanting to transfer before you even start at USC.
You said that you might want to major in computer science. Can you tell us which of the 8 Ivy League universities are higher ranked or otherwise better than USC for computer science? If you major in political science, what are you thinking of doing after graduating? One option that I have heard about from other students is attending law school after. Is this a possibility that you are considering?
Have you run the NPC on Stanford or any of the Ivy League universities and would they be any less expensive than USC? Are you going to need to take on debt if you stay four years at USC, and if so how much?
If you live close enough to USC to live at home, this will indeed save some money compared to attending a school where you would need to live away from home.
Where else did you apply from high school, and where else were you accepted?
It is difficult to give much useful advice given that I am confused about what your reason is for trying to transfer, and also given how difficult it is to transfer to Stanford or an Ivy League school. I have known in the past many students who got their bachelor’s degrees at universities that were ranked a bit lower than USC and who then went on to Stanford for their master’s degree.
Why “Ivies?” I guess Barnard is just because it’s Ivy-adjacent? There are tons of terrific schools for poli sci and/or data science/CS. Most of the schools you’re aiming for here take very few transfers.
If you really feel that you applied to the wrong schools this time around, you’re probably better off taking a gap year and reapplying. Test optional with a 4.18 weighted GPA is not a compellingly strong opening position for applying to ultra-competitive schools. (But if you applied next year, your senior grades would be included in your GPA, which would likely add more AP-weighted classes to the mix, yes?) But if you got into USC for film, which is very competitive, you must have some significant strengths. Where else did you apply, and where else were you accepted?
Bottom line, if USC is too expensive and you don’t like it, don’t matriculate there. Why throw a lot of money at a school that you feel negatively about from day one, and only want to transfer out?
I don’t care much for them being Ivies or highly ranked schools, I just believe they will offer better aid and some have curriculums that are more appealing to me. Usc is a great school but it’s too expensive for me to even dorm, I’d have to commute. If you know of more schools that offer great aid please let me know.
I was also accepted to UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara, UCSD, and UC Merced but I had the same situation with aid. Rejected by CalTech, Rice, Mit, and waitlisted Uchicago.
You’d be right about having a higher gpa from AP classes and I’m planning on taking the Sat this fall. I do want to take a gap year or defer my enrollment but I don’t know what difference it could make to my application and how to convince my parents to put off school for a year. I don’t know what do to during a gap year to improve my chances.
From USC “ USC administers one of the largest financial aid programs in the United States and works with families to meet 100 percent of the USC-determined financial need for students who meet all deadlines and eligibility requirements.”
What makes you think other colleges will be more affordable? Yes, some have deeper pockets, but I’m just wondering why you really think these other schools will be more affordable? Plus…getting accepted surely is not guaranteed the tippy top schools you listed.
Did the NPC’s for Rice, MIT, and UChicago project an affordable price? Those are probably best-case-scenario schools for need-based aid. There are plenty more excellent full-need-met schools you could apply to in the coming cycle, but you need to be clear as to whether any of them will be truly affordable, or whether your financial profile is better suited to schools that offer big merit awards. I’m assuming you must be from a “donut hole” family, because aid for truly low-income in-state students at the UC’s is pretty good. USC does meet need according to its formula, but it’s not as generous a formula as many.
Would CSU schools be affordable? How about the CC-to-UC route - could you afford the last two years at a UC? CC-to-CSU is obviously the most affordable path, but I understand that you are a well-qualified applicant who really wants a four-year experience. That, however, is an argument for preserving your first-year-applicant status by not starting college at USC. Once you matriculate, your options for merit aid become much more limited.
It’s an important election year, and you’re considering a poli sci major. Why not go all-in on a campaign that’s important to you, either locally or in a swing state? That, combined with reapplying to colleges (and prepping for the SAT or ACT), could fully occupy the first half of your gap year, and enhance your application as well. Then you could work and save money for the rest of the time, do other volunteer work, and take non-credit coding classes to get a head start on your CS interests. A year sounds like forever at your age, but it would go by in a heartbeat.
Do you think there is any chance that you or your parents entered information into the FAFSA and css profile incorrectly? For instance, it’s important that retirement assets that are in a 401k plan or IRA plan not be entered as “regular” assets but only as retirement assets, where they won’t be counted against you for financial aid purposes. (But they must be in a special retirement plan for this preferential treatment, not in a regular savings account that is being saved for retirement ).
Also, I recommend running the net price calculator for USC and the UCs today just to make sure that the values they come up with are similar to what you were offered. If there is a big discrepancy, you may be able to ask for a re-evaluation of your financial aid package. It is of course very late in the game – you would have to commit to one of the schools today and then ask about a re-evaluation tomorrow.
It is best to do the NPCs as a team, you and your parents, to make sure that you all agree on which data gets reported where, so that if someone has a misunderstanding, it will be more likely to surface.
How much debt would you need to take on to attend USC for a full four years?
I am wondering if you would be better off attending community college for two years and then transferring. California has the advantage of having a very good system of community colleges and in-state public universities that accept transfers after two years of college.
If you haven’t started at USC…then don’t go there if you can’t afford it. Are you nuts? Putting your trust in getting into an ivy league college is a losing battle. It might not be too late to apply to an in-state university. If not, take a semester at community college, then transfer. I promise you’re far better off doing that. In the world of computers, prestige means virtually nothing.
So it looks like you had some excellent in-state options and are now enrolled at a school that has a strong commitment to meeting need. Run the NPCs on other schools, as other posts have suggested, but it is difficult to imagine the finances improving. It is also difficult to imagine what you can do between now and the application deadlines for the upcoming admissions cycle to materially improve your chances at the most selective/rejective schools in the country, which tend to have very few spots for transfers.
Most Ivy League schools only accept transfers from community colleges or the military. Cornell being an exception, they allow transfers from a broader range of schools. So, basically the Ivy League schools are get in during the regular round, this is not a group of schools you can try to upgrade in to. Look further in to this so you understand 7/8 schools won’t be a viable transfer option from USC.
Sorry you are not feeling a fit so far. I hope as school starts that can change and you end up loving where you landed. Transferring to other schools is always an option if you do well but are not happy. Best of luck.
As I understand it, this applies primarily to Princeton. As far as the other Ivies, I know of kids from 4year colleges (not military or cc) who were accepted to Penn, Brown, Yale, Dartmouth and Columbia as transfers. Can’t speak to Harvard but I haven’t seen anything that leads me to believe they limit their transfers to cc and military applicants.
As far as Barnard, they seem to take financial aid requirements into account with their transfers. If you need aid that might put you at a disadvantage. They don’t have Columbia’s endowment numbers.
USC has pretty good fin-aid so don’t expect $$ will be much better at other than HYPS (which is extremely generous). Run the NPC to check.
Stanford’s transfers are limited to handfuls, and almost always non-traditional students. If you are the typical HS senior, don’t waste your time with this one.
And be careful with Columbia as they’ll likely offer you admission into the College of General Studies (CGS), not necessarily Columbia College. Aid at CGS is not great.
I can. There is no such restriction. That said, they only take ~ a dozen transfers per year, and few, if any, are transferring from similar quality schools.
If you’re going to apply as a transfer, then you’ll have two chances: freshman and sophomore year. You’ll need to send HS and college transcripts, several letters of recommendation and test scores. The letters will probably need to be from college professors. The transfer application deadline is in Feb, so that means you’ll need professors from your first term.
The transfer admission rate is even lower than for RD. But you might get lucky. I wouldn’t bother with Princeton or Stanford, as they have publicly stated that their transfer apps are for students from military, community college, or other similar backgrounds. But Barnard, Cornell and Columbia do take a number of transfers. You’ll need a rock solid reason on why you’re transferring. Saying that the community doesn’t feel right to me won’t be compelling. Academic reasons for transfer are usually better – especially if you have a change in heart for major.
Also note that the financial aid for transfers may not be as good as for freshman admits. So if your parents are feeling that USC is expensive, you might not get enough aid as a transfer. But I wish you luck