I know transfer rates vary with university. Harvard for example, exhibits a 1.04% transfer rate, whereas UPenn has 9.4% transfer rate.
If attending a school like Duke, Northwestern, Brown, Dartmouth, and transferring to a school like Yale, Columbia, Penn, would your chances be significantly higher considering you performed well enough in HS to gain admission to the first group, and continued performing well in college?
If you have the credentials and stats to get accepted to Duke, Brown, Dartmouth etc, then you have the stats to get into Penn, columbia etc.
But the difference is on a transfer. Does that apply for transfer? And even community college transfers who screwed up in hs and got their act together I’m community college can transfer to top schools. But dies coming to columbia from duke make one more likely to get in?
Any cases you know where someone who didn’t like a top 20 school tried to transfer to another top 20 but couldn’t?
No personal cases that i know, but I suppose that if you do well at a top school then it would look better then transferring from a CC. I’m not an expert on this however but at either institute you have to be sure to keep your grades high etc because even at a school like Duke, transferring to an ivy is very difficult.
I can’t say for sure, but I’d be willing to be that Columbia would be more willing to take a transfer from a school like Cornell or Dartmouth (or other top 20 school) who did well than someone from a community college or state school that did well.
OP: top schools have admitted transfers from community colleges – but only in very unique circumstances. These students weren’t kids who “got their act together” once they reached comm college – they were students who as seniors, applied and were accepted at a good no. of very selective colleges but for some reason, could not attend and ended up at comm college. These were kids who, as seniors, were accepted by Dukes, Stanfords, Haverfords and Browns and had the HS transcript, test scores and achievements that got them accepted.
The “late bloomer” who becomes a 4.0 GPA at community college with an indistinct HS record has, frankly, no chance to transfer into these extremely selective programs (unless he/she was an extremely important athlete).
@T26E4 You are obviously a more experienced CC poster than me, and have more knowledge of course. But, just check the transfer threads, I see many cases of sub-2100 sat admits from community college.
I think that the elite colleges might actually look toward special cases of students who overcame hardships or had unusual personal narratives, and be more generous in admitting them as transfers than they would students who simply wanted to “trade up.” A kid who struggled, possibly served a term in the military, and then attended a community college while working, for instance, earning astronomical grades, might display greater leadership potential than a kid who simply gets good grades on a straight academic trajectory. Most of these colleges are even more selective in transfer admissions than they are in freshman admissions, and they want something more than students chasing brand prestige.
of course there are students at top 20 Us who failed to be admitted as a transfer to a different top 20 U
If you win the lottery and get into one of those top schools, what makes you want to play the lottery again? Op
I actually know a kid who was a late bloomer, low SAT kid who did extremely well in CC and transferred to Cornell. He did have the “advantage” of being a first gen URM. But he was in no way a candidate for freshman acceptance at top schools.
@donnaleighg, Cornell takes a decent amount of transfers, and in fact, some of its contract colleges have articulation agreements with various CCs.
That’s different from most Ivies.
In the case of Harvard, they openly state–and their statistics show this to be true–that they prefer candidates from NON-IVY LEAGUE universities. It is rare to transfer between the Ivyies unless you have a really compelling reason.
The two most frequent scenarios I have seen in successful Ivy transfer are, one related to a topic/major–not currently offered at their current university and/or a personal situation which is compelling enough to warrant a transfer (and that is assuming you are already qualified). Remember, Princeton takes no transfers, H & Y are at about 1-2% acceptance–and that most transfer seats are tethered to attrition at each respective university–which is very low–about 3% on average.