Transferring after a bad first year

Transfer Students
1

I was hoping someone here could give me some advice. My daughter attended an in-state school, living away from home, during the 2013-2014 school year. Her first semester was rocky, but she ended up with an A, a B and a D, with a GPA of 2.667. She started out with a bang in the 2nd semester. However, in February, she let me know that she had an eating disorder. I honestly believed she was over- reacting, but I got her to a counselor who sees girls with eating disorders. Around the end of March (I really can’t remember) she told me that her counselor had suggested she seek treatment at an in-patient facility. Honestly, I really didn’t think her condition was bad, and spring break, she had all A’s and B’s. We really aren’t in a financial position to throw 10k out the window on a semester. Since she was doing well in school, we convinced her to stay in school and we would seek in-patient treatment when she got home for the summer. In hindsight, really bad decision. Her grades plummeted. I’m not sure she even kept going to class. Even worse, her health went really downhill. By the time she got home in May, she was a totally different girl than the one I had dropped off at her dorm the August prior. Her grades for the spring semester were 2 F’s, 1 D and 1C. Her cumulative GPA was a 1.556.

She went into an in-patient treatment facility within a week of being home, and was in treatment there, both in-patient and out-patient through September. She is still seeing her counselor. I think she is much better, although I have learned a lot about eating disorders, and people with the illness are very good liars, so I’m not sure if I will ever consider her “cured.”

She is back living at home, much to her dismay. She has a part-time job and has been attending the local community college. She got 2 B’s and 2 A’s last semester (repeating one of her F’s from spring semester and her D from the previous fall semester) She is currently taking a mini-mester class and should probably get an A when it is completed.

She decided that she wanted to transfer to a different in-state school, beginning the Fall of 2015. She sent in her application, and her essay explained her eating disorder and the bad year at the other university. (That was suggested to my by an admission counselor at that school when I called to discuss her options.) Including college courses she took while still in high school, I calculate her GPA being around 2.23. I believe the university had told me in the fall that they required at 2.0 to transfer.

Yesterday, she got a letter saying that she did not meet the criteria for transferring, and to submit her spring grades when available. She is devastated. And frankly, I’m kind of pissed. Even if you don’t look at an eating disorder as an illness, yes, she messed up, but obviously has been doing everything right since then.

I’m trying to help her figure out her options here. She really doesn’t want to be at the community college in the fall.

Does anyone know if we could get away with applying to another school, and just omitting the bad year at the other university? Could we just say she took a gap year?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

2

So she would be transferring as a sophomore correct? Did she have a good high school record (i.e. transcript and test scores)? If so, she may be able to get into some schools that do not heavily emphasize the first year of college. That isn’t to say though, that it doesn’t matter altogether. Many top tier universities will place HS grades above college grades for sophomore transfers.

You have probably found that, most colleges have GPA minimum requirements for transferring as well as minimum credit hours. There is really no way to bypass these. I think she will have to stay at community college for another year to raise her GPA and then transfer as a junior. Though this is not ideal, you won’t really be accepted anywhere else except 3rd tier colleges or other community colleges. Are there any specific schools she is interested in applying to?

Unfortunately, there is no way you can omit a bad year. This would be considered dishonesty and your daughter could end up having her acceptance or even her degree revoked. Since she actually does have college credit transcripts at actual institutions, they will have to be submitted wherever she applies.

3

1st) Does she have the general education pattern and major-preqs done for the state university? If not she will not be a competitive transfer.

2nd) This is the the speech I give to everyone who writes bad personal statements:

The point of a personal statement isn’t so much about being personal but about being likable.

A personal statement is PART OF the APPLICATION and thus it is about showing colleges the traits they are looking for in students. Colleges want students who will improve their campus so writing about improving the community or society is a good idea. Likewise they want students with a passion for learning, students who want more than just to get As, so intellectual growth is another get theme. Or good human traits such as morals/character is always appreciated.

Thus an essay about an eating disorder and a bad year at school was possibly one of the worst things to write. Not only does it now show the college any positive qualities, it actually hurts the applicant.

For the personal statement you need to take about the things i listed above. In other words your daughter needs to get involved with her CC campus ECs. For the additional comments section you need to explain the bad college grades but it SHOULD NOT be in the context of an eating disorder. I would just say the typical stuff about being unprepared for college.

3rd) on a personal-note. Your daughters eating disorder is dumb. Use myfitnesspal and learn to count calories, track macros (fats, proteins, carbs) and micronutrients (potassium, iron, sodium, etc) and she can determine her own body weight. Eating disorder is a lack of a proper education IMO.

4

Obviously you know nothing about eating disorders. You sound like a well-educated person, I’m surprised you would post such a comment without knowing what you were talking about. Eating disorders have nothing to do with counting calories. I would hope you wouldn’t tell anyone with depression they were “dumb”.

5

@Jlrguw The main problem is that public institutions usually want community college transfers to have 2 full years of coursework. Privates may have different requirements. Since your daughter did not complete transferable credit for her entire first year and had to repeat courses at the community college, she will likely not have the full 2 years by the end of the spring term.

However, the university did tell you to submit spring term grades and so there may be some possibility that they will admit her during the summer. Transfer applications are generally on a much later schedule than Freshman applications and they often make decisions well into the summer. At my university, Illinois Tech, we do not get 80% of our transfer applicants until about June 1, compared to February 1 for Freshman applicants and we have rolling applications. She needs to take as much coursework in the spring term as she can handle and then send her final Spring term grades in as soon as she gets them.

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@xraymancs‌ Thanks! Could you tell me what they might consider 2 full years? Not including the 3 hours she originally got a D in and re-took the class at cc, I’m calculating that she has 11 hours from the first university, 14 hours in the fall at cc, 3 hours during the mini-mester and she is registered for 16 in spring. That is 44, plus 3 she took at the cc dual enrollment during high school, plus 3 hours she has from Johns Hopkins, also during high school. That would be 50 hours. If 12 hours a semester is considered full time, would 48 hours be considered 2 full years?

I think she needs to call and set up an appointment with the admissions counselor. (Something I suggested in the fall, she just wasn’t ready yet.)

On the parent’s forum, others have suggested we try to get a retro-active medical withdrawal for that 2nd semester. I’m not sure if that is even possible, and they are closed today. The university was not very helpful last summer when we were trying to figure out what to do regarding the fall. I think it was a combination of her being over 18, and not really being in a good place, and me being so stressed about the whole situation and not being able to think straight.

Thanks again for your help!

7

Typically, 4 year universities expect 60 credits to be equivalent to 2 years. However, since there is usually a cap on total transferable credits that is just a bit above 60, your Ds 50 credits might well be considered sufficient. It is worth sending the Spring grades in and seeing what they say.

Calling the admissions office is a very good idea. They can tell her unambiguously what they are expecting. They already have all her transcripts, right?

You can certainly try for the retroactive Ws but after this much time they may not be willing to bend too much. As others have said on the parallel thread, it is worth it to try and it would certainly be a psychological boost to get it. However, look at it this way: once your D has entered the other university, done well and graduated, who will care about that bad semester anymore? I have seen a lot of transfer and graduate applications with bad semesters in my 31 years as a physics professor and I assure you that they are always put into context. I know one student who failed out of two previous schools, restarted at a community college and then was admitted to our program at Illinois Tech two years ago. He is graduating this year and I chose him as my grader for the senior level quantum mechanics course sequence because of his performance in the courses last year. He will be getting into a good Ph.D. program for sure and no one will be asking about his bad semesters after that.

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This thread is not about eating disorders and their causes and/or cures. I left the one comment that at least mostly referred to what the OP originally asked about, and deleted the rest that only dealt with eating disorders, as if that were actually the topic of the thread. It isn’t. Stay on topic.