<p>Hey all,
I'm a freshman at a non-Cornell Ivy inquiring about my odds for admission to Yale for transfer. Are the odds increased for students transferring between Ivies, or are my chances diminished because it's regarded as a lateral move?</p>
<p>[Transfer</a> Program | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/transfer]Transfer”>Transfer Application Process | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions) </p>
<p>“As competitive as the admissions process is for freshmen, the transfer process is even more so. Yale receives more than 1,000 transfer applications each year, and we have spaces for only 20 to 30 students.”</p>
<p>As with all transfer student applications, much depends on what Yale would offer you that you cannot get from your current school.</p>
<p>My experience is anecdotal, vicarious, and a lot of it is old. But I have no reason to believe much has changed.</p>
<p>I have seen four different categories of successful transfer applicants. They are all pretty rare.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Recruited athletes. Obviously, they have a great chance.</p></li>
<li><p>People whom Yale would have accepted (and maybe did accept) out of high school, who went elsewhere (like Harvard or Stanford) and want to change their minds for whatever reason. Surprisingly, perhaps, these people seem to do OK, notwithstanding that they have no meaningful argument that Yale has resources their current institution lacks.</p></li>
<li><p>People whom Yale would have accepted (and maybe did accept) out of high school, who went elsewhere for some completely different type of experience, that’s now over. The prototype of this is people who went to Deep Springs; at least a few of them get accepted most years. It’s not clear who else would qualify. A special category is people who choose to leave one of the military academies. I don’t know whether they belong in this basket or the one above, but you see them get accepted as transfers periodically. </p></li>
<li><p>People who went to public universities or small colleges and just knocked the cover off the ball and hit the limits of what they could do there almost immediately. You would think this group would constitute most of the transfers, but I think it accounts for the fewest among these categories. I don’t know whether it’s because people like this who want to transfer are rare, or because Yale doesn’t accept many of them.</p></li>
</ol>