I am hoping to be a sophomore year transfer, but I took two summer classes and my GPA is currently a 3.5. After looking at past threads for transfer stories to ivies and upper-tier schools, it looks like 3.8+ is the cut-off for those schools. Do I have a chance at all if my GPA remains a 3.5, or should I look at other schools?
Also, is the rigor of my current school taken into account, or do they not really care what school I am transferring from?
Are you planning to send applications out before March 15th for fall 2018?
@ZxcSmith Yes, I’m a freshman now hoping to transfer as a sophomore.
Where are you now? Are you in community college? What were your high schools grades?
Generally it is more difficult to get into a highly selective school as a transfer than it is as a high school student trying to get in as a freshman. Financial aid is also much more difficult to get as a transfer student. A 3.5 GPA is very low for MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Chicago, or the Ivy League. Of course, after only two classes you are not very far into your college career (if that is where you are).
If you get straight A’s and nothing but A’s where you are then you might have a chance, more likely after two years than after 1 (since you would have more time to get more A’s to offset what I suspect is one B so far). However, frankly I think that your best chance to ever attend one of these schools is to transfer to a very good in-state public university, do very well there (nearly straight As) all the way through your Bachelor’s degree, and apply to an Ivy League or equivalent for graduate school. When I was a graduate student at a highly ranked school there were a lot of graduate students there who had attended their local in-state flagship university for undergrad. What they had in common was very good grades as an undergrad.
Another thing to keep in mind: These top schools do not have any secret or magic or easy way to impart knowledge into the brains of their students. If you learn more at a highly selective university, it will be because the classes go faster, there is more homework and the homework is more difficult, tests are more difficult and the grading is more difficult, and they generally expect a lot more (including a lot more work) from their students.
I would suggest that you do as well as you can where you are for at least the current semester and probably a full year, and see where you stand. When you have more grades then you will be in a better position to figure out what makes sense going forward.
@DadTwoGirls Thank you for your in-depth answer and honesty!
I’m currently at UC Berkeley. My high school GPA was a 4.6/5.0 weighted (3.9/4.0 unweighted).
Should I wait until sophomore year to attempt transferring? I’m really unhappy here and want to transfer but if it’s a hopeless case with a 3.5 GPA I understand it might not make sense to as of right now…
They will look at your high school transcript at this point as well as your college. I would try to discern why you don’t like the school? Is it the location, the academics, your major or the social environment. Try to figure this out. I do know of a student that transferred from UC Berkeley to another east coast school the. Transferred back
@Ducky312 it’s a host of reasons. I don’t really like the academics or students here. The class sizes are really large and I realized I do much better in smaller class environments. I want to be back on the East Coast because that’s where my family is. Since I’m paying out-of-state tuition I’d like to get the amenities of a private school for the same price tag. I also discovered what major I want to do now and Berkeley doesn’t have a good program for it so it would be nice to go to a school with the right resources for my major.
@avocadough: The reasons that you list in post #7 make sense to me (as the father of at least one child who preferred a small school and currently appears to be doing very well at one). If you try to transfer now as a university freshman then your high school grades will matter. However, apparently you had very strong grades in high school. UC Berkeley is a great school, but I understand that it is not a great fit for everyone and that if you are paying out of state tuition then you should be able to find very good smaller schools at a similar price point. I will note that my daughter at a smaller school is also a freshman, and has one class as large as 90 students but also has two classes with 15 or fewer students, which I think is pretty good for a college freshman.
Try to do as well as you can in your current classes for multiple reasons, including the fact that it will make it easier to transfer. To me your comments in post #7 make it look like it makes sense to send in applications to transfer at the end of this year and see what happens. If you don’t get in anywhere that you like at an affordable cost then you can try again later – there is no penalty for trying. I will note that my daughter is at a small “primarily undergraduate” university in eastern Canada. There are a small number of very good schools there which are less expensive (even for Americans) than comparable US schools and possible to get into based on grades without needing to worry about ECs or essays – let me know if you want a list. However, obviously there are also lots of very good LACs in the eastern US.
@DadTwoGirls Thank you so much; I appreciate it immensely. My largest class is like 600 students so that 90-student-class doesn’t seem too bad! Do you think it’s likely I won’t get into any of the top-tier schools at the end of this year though? And it would be great if you could send me a list of the smaller universities in eastern Canada!
“And it would be great if you could send me a list of the smaller universities in eastern Canada!”
Mount Allison (New Brunswick)
Acadia (Nova Scotia)
St Francis Xavier (Nova Scotia)
Bishops (Quebec)
Bishops is an English language school which is located in a very small town that is essentially totally bilingual. You don’t need any French at all to attend Bishop’s or any of these other schools. Mount Allison was very recently ranked #1 among small primarily undergraduate universities in Canada. Acadia and St Francis Xavier were 5 and 6. Of the top 6, the other three were either larger (Trent in Ontario), much further west (UNBC in Prince George BC), or both (Lethbridge in Alberta). Trent might be worth looking at also. Sending in applications will be quite easy for all of these (eg, no essay), but you will need your high school and university transcripts.
We visited all of these and liked them a lot. It was actually difficult to choose between them. All are SAT optional except for Acadia which does not look at SAT at all. Admission to any of them is based on grades and references. Your high school grades will be sufficient for any of them, and I don’t think that one A and one B in university will make any difference. For an international student all will cost about the same as the in-state costs at our state’s public university here in New England (if you compare costs on-line, remember that the Canadian dollar is worth approximately 80 cents US).
Regarding your getting into top US LACs such as Bowdoin or Middlebury, I have no idea but you probably do have a chance again based primarily on your high school grades.
Honestly, a 3.5 is pretty low for the Ivies and schools in that range. I’ve worked with students who have been accepted to schools like Boston College, USC, etc. in that range (but they had VERY strong personal statements, great high school stats, and took challenging courses in college). I think your best bet would be to look at mid-to-low first tier colleges.
@DadTwoGirls I will most definitely look into those schools; they seem great! Thank you so much; you have been a huge help and I greatly appreciate all of your insight!
@thetransfercoach Hm ok 
Thank you! What constitutes mid-to-low first tier colleges? Would you be able to give me a list?
You said you’re interested in universities in the Northeast, so I would look at Northeastern, Boston University, Boston College, George Washington University, American University, Syracuse, etc. if your GPA remains in that range.
However, keep in mind you’ve only had two courses! You could do much better after this semester, your grades could stay the same, or your grades could drop. If you improve your grades, you could be a competitive candidate at more selective universities.
Also, given that you are only a freshman, your high school grades and test scores will still be taken into consideration by most of these colleges. Thus, if you were a terrible student in high school, that makes chances at an elite college even more unlikely.
I concur w/ @thetransfercoach. At the moment, I’d be focusing on my studies. Put thoughts on transferring aside for the moment, and re-approach the idea of transferring once you have a better idea of your academic standing.
I’ll tell you this: you’re just now building your GPA, and a 3.5 is by no means a bad place to start boosting your GPA. People have done a lot more with a lot less.
@thetransfercoach Ok, thank you! I guess I’ll have to build my list once I know my academic standing after this semester.
@TransferStalker Thank you for your insight! I’m trying my hardest but it’s definitely a learning curve to adjust from high school to college, especially with some of the grade deflation I’ve felt :,) I’ll focus on improving my GPA for now!
@thetransfercoach @TransferStalker Do either of you happen to know how colleges look at Pass/No Pass?
Well, it depends on the college(s) you’re talking about. I’ve seen some schools explicitly state in their transfer credit subsection that they do not transfer credit from a pass/fail class.
Once you have a solid list of schools you’d like to apply to, you should definitely call the school, ask for a transfer admissions officer, and inquire about Pass/Fail classes.
However, for now, you should avoid Pass/Fail classes if you want to transfer as many credits as possible to wherever you end up applying.