<p>I'm in a bit of a bad place in terms of university admissions. I'm British and I only applied to Yale in the US, for purely financial reasons. I got rejected, and it seems like I'll be rejected by all the good British unis too. No one knows the reason for this, because my own teachers admit that there are students at my school who got accepted into some schools that rejected me, despite having much worse grades, ECs, leadership positions etc.
I can't spend another year in a limbo (I'm ona gap year now), so it seems like I'll have to go to a not-so-good British school, but frankly speaking, I think it's a waste of my time, potential and my parents' money. Hence I thought that I might study in Britain for a year, and while completing the first year of my studies at home, re-apply to more American universities, given that I'm now more able to handle it financially.
Is this even possible? As in, do unis such as HYP or other Ivys or good liberal arts colleges allow it? I don't want to sound arrogant by saying that I'm too good for the school I got into, but while I got over 90% in most of my 6 A-level subjects, my classmates who got into the same school struggled to get 70% in 3 A-levels, so I hope you can see where I'm coming from...</p>
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<li>I don’t know of any American school that pledges to meet the full financial need of international transfer admits other than Harvard and Yale, though there may be a couple more. Princeton (no transfers), Columbia, UChicago and Stanford don’t, for example.</li>
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<p>Now, there are schools which may award financial aid to international transfers in some years and not others, or without meeting full need, or only in exceptional cases, such as Columbia, Stanford, etc. Even my own school, which is far less wealthy than those, is supporting a friend of mine from Korea who transferred in as a sophomore–although they made her wait a year before she could apply for financial aid because they do not award aid to international transfers but do award first-time aid to continuing students. HOWEVER, the point remains: You are extremely unlikely to receive financial aid if you transfer to an American institution.</p>
<p>You didn’t indicate you need financial aid, but I’m just putting this out there in case you do.</p>
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<li>You are even more unlikely to transfer to an American institution, especially of the kind you seem to have your heart set on.</li>
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<p>Acceptance rates for transfer applicants to Harvard, Yale et al. hover around 1%. A lot of the people they accept got into those schools as freshman applicants and went elsewhere, or have a non-traditional background. For them to reconsider your case in the context of transfer admissions you’d have to improve your application immensely–not just enough to meet the standard you fell short of as a freshman applicant, but enough to beat a bunch of extremely motivated candidates to a transfer spot. (Because of the increased selectivity of the admission process, even at Harvard and Yale transfer admits tend to be more impressive/accomplished/successful than freshman admits.) The odds are overwhelmingly against you.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think it’s useless to angle for a transfer into Yale from anywhere, least of all from abroad, when they didn’t like your application enough the first time.</p>
<p>I think you should do your best to get a first from your university and make the most of the opportunities there. That will set you up for a job or grad school admissions better than pining after the American Ivy League would.</p>
<p>@Ghostt thank you for your reply, it was very informative!
I was wondering: when you say transfer, you mean starting from year 2 of college by skipping the freshmen year, right?
I’ve read somewhere when I was applying to Yale, that if you are enrolled in another higher ed instituton as a freshman, you can still apply to start as a freshman at Yale the following year. I really wouldn’t mind spending a year longer in school if that was the case. Do you know anything about this or did my subconsciousness make that up?
I also get what you mean about getting a first class degree, but I feel that college is about much more than employability and the such, and having visited the school on a number of occasions, and having friends who go there, I just feel that I would be miserable studying there. The place is full of ignorant, slacking students, and it’s just a big party from what I’ve seen. Now, obviously, I like parties, but it’s not my main point of focus when going to uni, so I’m really rather desparate at this point…:(</p>
<p>Yes, I mean transferring in as a sophomore or junior.</p>
<p>I think the provision you describe sounds very unlikely. You should go to Yale’s website and double check. My gut feeling at the moment is that you’re misremembering the particulars somewhat.</p>
<p>If it is true that you can apply to Yale as a freshman from another university, then that’s great for you because freshman admissions, albeit very difficult, are still easier than transfer admissions–though you will be wasting a year’s worth of money and opportunity cost at your British university if you don’t intend to graduate from there, in my opinion.</p>
<p>However, again, I don’t think that’s actually possible.</p>
<p>I understand your desire to be around serious students and sympathize with it. However, I think it’s important to realize that Yale is not full of serious students either. Partying and immaturity exist at every institution of higher learning in the world, including Yale. Are students at Yale more likely to be academically accomplished than students at a not-so-great university in Britain? Sure. But you’re chasing after something that doesn’t exist if you expect them to provide you with sophisticated conversation and intellectual stimulation on Friday night. (In fact I’d say the more years you spend outside of academia in an attempt to get into Yale, the more the gap in maturity between you and Yale’s freshman class will widen.)</p>
<p>What I’m trying to say is that partying is universally among the main activities of university students–and serious students are universally unhappy about this fact. As a ‘serious’ student you will never find an undergraduate institution where you fit in with everyone, but you could find like-minded individuals almost everywhere. Including at a not-so-great university in Britain, believe it or not.</p>
<p>I am currently spending the year as a visiting student at Oxford and I have to say, there are a lot of postgraduate students here who come from not-so-great universities where they worked their butts off. That is true for the great research universities in the US as well; the common assumption that you have to have gone to an Ivy League university to end up at an Ivy League university is wrong. (I’m using ‘Ivy League’ as shorthand for a good graduate department here despite my distaste for the pervading Ivy League-obsessed mentality on these boards–there’s an entire world outside of those eight universities.)</p>
<p>Point is, there are many places that can provide you with the tools to succeed in your chosen discipline–and there are smart and committed people at all of those places. You may have to go against the student culture, work hard when seemingly everyone is partying around you, and go out of your way to find other ‘serious’ students, but despite your feelings at the moment you are not being shipped off to an intellectual wasteland, I promise.</p>
<p>Now, if you’ve done a lot of thinking on the subject and you simply don’t want to go where you’ve been accepted, I guess that’s that. No one can force you to go, and you shouldn’t force yourself either.</p>
<p>If you think you have better chances of getting into a good university next year, I’d advise you to take another gap year and work really hard on your application next time around.</p>
<p>But please don’t fixate on Yale. Not only is it very difficult to get into, but it’s really not the bookworm’s paradise you’re envisioning.</p>
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<p>I agree that most transfers to H & Y were competitive applicants as fr and chose to attend elsewhere, however neither of these schools accept a substantial number of NT students. In contrast, around a half of Stanford’s transfer class are NTs or CC transfers each year:</p>
<p><a href=“Transfer student experience offers rewards, challenges”>http://www.stanforddaily.com/2013/09/17/transfer-student-experience-offers-rewards-challenges/</a></p>
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<p>Only if you will have completed less than what Y considers a year of full time college by the time you matriculate as a transfer. Please read the Y website, they very clear. And be aware, this is a very liberal definition of who can apply as a fr applicant, at some schools taking 1 post-HS college class will qualify you as a transfer applicant.</p>
<p>Thanks to both of you, I guess I’ll just double-check it with them.
In reply to what @Ghostt said, I’m not looking for a bookworm’s paradise and I’m not nearly as anti-social as you think I am. It’s just, I come from a family of a very well-educated family, and ignorance makes me homicidal. I don’t exactly fancy talking about logical paradoxes or whatever on a Friday night, but I can’t stand it when people can’t distinguish between Russia and Germany, can’t comprehend the fact that not everyone from Asia is Chinese or who see me as a genius simply because I can differentiate a simple function. That’s the sort of people I’ll have to spend 3 years of my life with, if I do go to the school that accepted me, and I suppose that anyone with half a brain, no matter how sociable and party-loving, wouldn’t like that 
I hope I didn’t come across as a complete snob…Chances are, I did…</p>
<p>I don’t think you came across as a snob, but I find your situation confusing. For US students, the joy of the UK system is that it is so clear-cut: with a very few exceptions, if you have the marks for the course you get the place. As you are on a gap year, you applied to uni with your A level marks, so you knew what you had when you chose what you applied to. If you had the marks and didn’t get offers, it is worth a serious look, because the other major variables are your PS and your recs (not your ECs!). If there are problems there, the problems will still exist when you try to transfer. </p>
<p>The other thing is that you haven’t told us what the not-good university is, and it may not be as bad as it feels right now, while the sting of rejection from shinier names is still fresh… If you were aiming Ivy in the US, I’m guessing you were aiming Oxbridge/LSE/UCL/Durham in the UK. The uni that has offered you a place may have the troglodytes you want to avoid, but I would be really surprised if it doesn’t have some serious students- and some great professors. They may not be as visible at first blush, but it’s the rare uni that won’t have some fellow travelers for you.</p>
<p>@collegemom3717 That’s the problem. I’ve read my recs, and words ‘philosophical genius’ and the such appear there, so they’re not the problem. I was told that my PS was the best that they’ve seen at our school since they send a premed student to Yale a few years back, so that’s not the problem either, at least in the UK. Not to mention that some people from my school got into LSE and the such with far fewer accomplishments than mine, such as great internships with important politicians and national prizes in economics. No one knows what the problem is, because given that the UK system is so clear-cut, I should have got into LSE etc. Oxbridge is always a long shot, no matter how brilliant you are, so I’m not sulking about it, but there are other top unis in the UK that took people less qualified than me, at least on paper, and that’s where this sour attitude comes from .And it’s not just me, it’s every single person who looked at my application and compared it to those of other students at our school applying to the same unis that is just like ‘How on Earth is this even happening?’ :(</p>
<p>Is your school perplexed enough to phone one of the unis and ask? It may not change anything, but even if it got you a bit more of an understanding it could be worthwhile. </p>
<p>@collegemom3717 of course they did that. most schools just gave us the usual crap: it didn’t reflect your inability, but the superior ability and promise of others, which doesn’t help much, given that people with less impressive applications got in :/</p>