I’m a freshman at UC Berkeley. For a number of reasons, I’m interested in applying for transfer to Harvard College. As a senior in high school last year, my freshman application to Harvard was rejected. However, my interviewer assured me that I’m definitely qualified, and that my reason for being denied admission was most likely related to factors not under my control. So, after this academic year concludes, I will make another attempt, this time with a full year of college grades to further prove my academic prowess. I would greatly appreciate any advice regarding what steps should be taken to maximize the probability of a successful application.
In the last several years, Harvard has accepted about twelve to fifteen (12-15) transfer students from a pool of about 1500 applicants -- that's a 1% transfer acceptance rate. My guess is that a third of admitted transfer students are recruited athletes (4-5), so the real-acceptance rate for non-athletes is probably 8-9 students for an acceptance rate of about 0.05% to 1%.
Yale has some solid information for transfer applicants that applies to students seeking to transfer to Harvard:
With that in mind, what academic opportunities would Harvard provide you with that cannot be obtained at UC Berkeley or any other college? Successful transfer applicants can answer that question – can you?
I have no doubt that your interviewer was correct -- you were qualified. However, Harvard is on record as saying 80% of applicants can do the work on their campus and 40% are -- just like you -- highly qualified. If you take Admissions at their word, that means 14,000 students were also highly qualified. (35,000 X .40 = 14,000), but Admissions only has room for 1,660 of them. Thousands of qualified students are rejected every year.
Harvard keeps an electronic copy of every rejected student's application for three (3) years. Therefore students who apply for transfer admissions will have their rejected freshman application re-read, along with whatever notes the Admissions Officers made at that time. So, whatever reason(s) you were denied will need to be addressed in your transfer application.
Realistically, you were NOT waitlisted last year -- you were not a runner-up! Therefore your application was not even close (sorry). It is highly doubtful, almost to the point of an impossibility, for any rejected student to gain admission to Harvard as a transfer applicant.
With all the above in mind, my suggestion would be to enjoy UC Berkeley!
Great advice above. Now splash yourself with ice water and slap yourself in the face. Good. You are great where you are. H is a great place, but has nothing on UC Berkeley. Enjoy California and stop this nonsense!
One further grace note to gibby’s excellent summary: I don’t have hard data to prove it, but based on anecdotal evidence and things I have observed over the years, a successful peer-to-peer transfer application between elite universities like Harvard and Berkeley often (in my experience, always) involves a student who was accepted at the target university when he or she applied as a high school student, but chose to go elsewhere. There are also a couple of other categories of students besides athletes who are disproportionally represented in admitted transfer classes: those coming from colleges that clearly don’t offer the educational opportunities the applicant needs, and special situations like Deep Springs students.
1% or 0.5% significantly overstates the chances of a transfer applicant from Berkeley who was previously rejected. Further proving your “academic prowess” is irrelevant. When Harvard turned you down, it probably had nothing to do with doubts about your academic ability.
In terms of educational opportunity and faculty strength, Berkeley is one of the few universities in the world that can actually match Harvard. Take advantage of it.