Transfer Insight and Suggestions

Transfer Students
1

Hey everyone, I’m looking for some advice on schools I could potentially transfer to and if anyone has any insight on the college transfer process. I know there’s probably hundreds of discussions on this forum on topics very similar to mine, but a lot of them seem to be pretty outdated (most of the discussions I found were from years ago).

Basically I messed up pretty badly in high school (graduated with a 3.16 weighted GPA on a 4.5 scale) and ended up at a school that I’m not happy with. I don’t have any good excuse for not doing well in high school, just that I was extremely unmotivated and honestly didn’t really care at all about my grades. My major is pretty much unheard of around here, but I would probably just stick it out if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t take a large amount of the classes I need to graduate simply because there aren’t enough people registering for those classes to be held. I’m currently a rising sophomore in the process of finishing my freshman year at college, and I’m planning on transferring out either for the Spring semester of the 2020-2021 year or for the fall of my junior year. I’ve maintained a fairly good GPA since being at college, and I currently have a 3.80 out of 4.0 and I’m expecting to maintain that or even raise it (although probably not by very much) by the end of this semester. Due to my pretty underwhelming high school transcript, I’m hoping to apply to schools that wouldn’t require sending my high school transcript after either 30 credits or 60 credits. I’ve already found a few schools that have this policy (University of Maryland, University of Miami, American University), but I’m looking if anyone else knows of more schools that also do this.

Thank you in advance and good luck to anyone else in a similar position as me!

Current School: Medium-sized private school in Connecticut
High School GPA: 3.16 weighted (out of 4.5)
Class Rank: High school didn’t rank or report rank.
ACT: 31 cumulative (30 on English, 28 on Math, 34 on Reading, 30 on Science, 6 in writing).

College GPA: 3.80 (hopefully 3.85 by the end of the semester)
Work Experience: I’ve worked here and there, but nothing that’ll particularly impress the admissions board.
Volunteer Work: Volunteered for a month last summer in California with homeless and at-risk youth.

Side note: If I do end up applying to schools that mandate submission of high school transcripts, I’m hoping that maybe they’ll give me the benefit of the doubt due to my high school (public high school in NYC area) being very high-ranked and known for being extremely academically rigorous. Does anyone know if that will be the case?

2

So what you would need to do is to find schools that you can afford to transfer to. Then look at their transfer requirements. Each school is different. They will say on their website whether they offer FA to transfer students. Many (most?) do not. OTOH many do. If you’re a NYC kid, maybe look at SUNYs and CUNYs first as at least they offer in-state tuition. One other consideration is transfer credit. How much credit will target school give you for your current work? Regarding high school record, most colleges look at your college performance for the bulk of their assessment. Googling and will get you to that college’s report on transfer. Section D is transfer info. You can see how many transfer students they took for a given year. You can also see if they need a minimum HS GPA. Essay: The transfer essay basically discusses why you want to transfer. The essay topic (and other criteria) are available on the Common App website. There’s a different portal for transfer.