Transfer Students: Chance Me!

Transfer Students
1

Hi. I’m a freshman in college and would appreciate if someone could offer me realistic chances in transferring to: USC, Howard University, Hampton, Emory, Tulane, U of Mich, and Vanderbilt considering their transfer acceptance rates. I also would like some suggestions if I should apply as a college sophomore now or a college junior later on.

Demographics: 18 year old, Male, African-American, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American.
Stats
College GPA: 4.0
Credits: 30
Major: Pre-Psychology and maybe a minor in ethnomusicology.

ECs: Research program at college (working with participants to record how their behavior changes before/after they use social media)

Awards: President’s List (GPA of 3.75 or higher)

HS GPA: 3.3 (Had some personal hardships in HS from a year which is why the GPA became lower)

ECs: Choir, Piano, Dance, Boy Scouts (Den Leader, First Class ranking,) Internship where I worked at hometown’s city hall and was noticed by the city senator, 20+ hours of giving lunch to the homeless community (Over 500+ people were fed in one month), 5+ hours of assisting in senior housing, 100+ hours of assisting the special needs children in my P.E. class, Hosted/Lead a Thanksgiving dinner for the foster youth population in Pasadena, Spoken Word opportunity at Pasadena and got an award for the work from City Hall, Super Bowl of Caring/Food Giveaway (my church raised food for families and we fed 300+ people), Church Youth Leader, Sunday school instructor for kids ages 3-10, Poetry Camp (Worked to create poetry and got my work trademarked), Head Usher at church, wrote jingles for a commercial for a successful business on Facebook, and did a selective summer program at USC which was lead by an actor where we wrote proposals on police brutality and sent it to our specific city halls.

AP Psych: 4
Dual Enrollment: A (English) and B (Religion)

Awards: Perfect Attendance, Academic Excellence, Student of the Month, Most Outstanding Student.

I am aware that Vanderbilt is a bit of a reach and I’m not sure if their average GPA is still around 3.4 for transfers, I was interested in this fact. If someone could chance me, it would be appreciated. Thank you!

2

If you apply as a junior transfer (will have 60 credits by the spring before you start fall at the new college), then your high school record will be less important than if you apply as a sophomore transfer (with less of a college record, your high school record will still be significant).

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I’m assuming you’re in community college at the moment. If you’re not, then it seems you have a good gig already and transferring to a more expensive university won’t benefit you. Before you apply, run the net price calculator for these schools and make sure they’re affordable.
Transferring for the sake of prestige is generally a bad idea and often ends badly. Credits are lost during transfers and you run the risk of running out of financial aid.

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Apply now. You can always apply again next year. Your college stats are great, and your URM status will certainly help.

How much financial aid will you need? That will play a huge role at schools like USC, Vandy, etc. If you are out of state at Michigan you prob won’t get much financial aid.

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I will a good medium-sized amount of financial aid for some of these schools probably. Also, thank you for the tip on U of Mich as I am from California.

6

Howard won’t supply much FinAid. Not 100% certain, but you should plan on paying a minimum of $30K-35K/yr out of pocket if you plan to transfer to Howard. It would be unusual for a transfer to get much FinAid there.

Hampton will be slightly less costly out-of-pocket and is a fantastic university, too.

Emory, USC and Vanderbilt are full-need universities, so all meet your financial need as they determine your need. On the other hand, each of these are going to be much more difficult to be admitted into.

If these are your most desired choices, you should most definitely apply. However, if you must transfer out of your current college, be sure you include other schools where it is more likely you’ll be admitted AND are affordable to you.

Good luck!

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Oh I see! Thanks for the advice!