Hi, I’m currently a freshman at Vanderbilt and 'm looking to transfer.
I’m a physics major at Vanderbilt with a 3.0 major gpa and a 2.753 overall gpa. My goal is grad school, so I would prefer a school that has strong physics connections and is on an equal footing with Vanderbilt academics wise, but I would prefer a school with minimal to no Greek-life present on campus. I know standardized test scores are not nearly as big of a deal in transfer applications, so my GPA will make this difficult, so transferring to a school of equal caliber may not be possible which is fine with me. If it gets me a shot at a decent grad school, I’m fine with it.I’ll have completed 30 hours at the end of this semester, 9 in my major. I’ll readily provide any other information necessary to get a good read on where I should look and what my chances are.
Probably look at the top 40 or below university if you want a shot at transferring. Even if you are from Vanderbilt the 2.753 GPA will hurt you a lot. Maybe UCR or some place like that
Do you have other criteria for where you want to transfer? Large or small, urban or college town, any regional preferences? There are many excellent physics programs throughout the country and you can get into a great graduate program from any of them if your academics are strong enough. We have had physics majors form my school, Illinois Tech, go to very selective graduate programs on a regular basis and we are not top 20 in the usually quoted rankings.
My advice would be to make sure that whatever school you go to has a graduate program so you can get research experience alongside graduate students and that it have a regularly offered full complement of Junior/Senior level physics courses (2 semesters of quantum, 2 semesters of electrodynamics, and statistical mechanics).