<ol>
<li><p>According to the transfer admissions department when I spoke to them - the common app starts August 1 and you can technically apply immediately afterwards. Decisions are based entirely on individual mitigating circumstances so it’s hard to define when you’ll get an answer back. </p></li>
<li><p>No, you’ll have to wait to complete the semester, grades to be posted and send the official transcript to them. I don’t think there’s any way around this to the best of my knowledge.</p></li>
<li><p>Michigan does not do conditional acceptances, however they will defer you if they feel you have potential. Once you’re deferred, you can do things to assist you such as writing a personal statement, additional material the admission board may find useful, or anything else that might help you out. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Bottom line is this, as a freshman transfer your chances are negligible to be considered for admission. The reason for this is simply because they want to see your academic progression since HS, and unfortunately one semester isn’t enough time to accurately gauge it. Michigan specifies that they give preference to junior transfers, but you could safely translate that to “we don’t accept you unless you are a junior transfer.” You could get away with it if you’re within your last semester of your sophomore year and apply while awaiting grades, but even then it’s iffy.</p>
<p>Hopefully I’ve given the correct info, much of this is from personal experience.</p>
<p>thank you to the above posters for your insight. I have a few more follow up questions though :P</p>
<p>If they defer me, will that mean waiting until after my first semester grades get finalized? or will they defer me to the next semester (fall of 2012)</p>
<p>Also, is there any statistics concerning the distribution of transfers based on year? I would imagine the spread is about 99% junior transfers, but it’d be interesting to see otherwise.</p>
<p>I don’t believe you will get deferred because you want to be a winter transfer, that only works for early action people. You will either get accepted or outright rejected. </p>
<p>There are no statistics published that would indicate how many are junior transfers and how many are sophomore transfers, at least I haven’t found anything. I don’t believe the number would be quite as high as 99% but we can safely assume that at least 75% are junior transfers.</p>
<p>One thing that I can say which others have - UM prefers students with at least 60+ credits. They like students from Michigan 2 year CCs. </p>
<p>One of my friends applied for transfer this past term. Rejected from HS, got a 4.0 GPA/16 credits his first term at a public michigan 4 year. Denied for Fall 2011 transfer.</p>
<p>I just found out some useful information for transfers after speaking to an admissions counselor. She told me that basically the transfer process is a lot more straight forward than the freshman admissions process. All Michigan really looks for is GPA and number of credits. She told me that the closer one is to 55 credits (where high school grades don’t count anymore), the less important the high school grades become. For someone with only 15 credits, high school grades matter a lot but for someone with 45 credits, high school grades are almost irrelevant. She also said that essays are not very important at all, they consider it but really the importance of GPA dwarfs it. EC activities also are considered, especially leadership, but again, it is not that important. So basically someone with a lot of credits and a very high GPA but mediocre ECs and essays will be viewed more favorably compared to someone excellent ECs and essays but an average GPA. In short, get your GPA really close to a 4.0 and you’re most likely in.</p>
<p>@ anthonyxy21, I was essentially told the same thing by one of the admissions officers from the College of Engineering - just not as bluntly lol. That makes me feel much better since I’ve maintained a great GPA with a ton of credit hours. The only thing I hope they don’t get nervous about is the fact that I’m coming in with so many credit hours… I suppose I just need to articulate that I don’t mind losing half of them in the transfer process. If I can transfer in 65 or so, that’d be awesome!</p>
<p>great to see all the posts. FYI, rejected after one semester with 3.76. I understand where they are coming from though wanting to see a larger body of work. Fall 2012 though!!! GO BLUE</p>
<p>I seem to have broken the trend after applying to the CoE back in January. My application was put on hold until final winter grades came out. Sent them in, and was accepted for Fall 2011 around May 1st or so. Interestingly enough I had only 12 credits when I applied, not counting some AP credit. So I have managed to transfer in one year and fulfill all the prerequisite requirements for the college of engineering. It can be done.</p>