Transferring to a better school

Transfer Students
1

Hey

I’m going to be attending Tepper undergrad at CMU as a freshman in the fall. I’m very happy to be there, but am definitely open to potentially transferring at some point to a different school. Of course, I’m only going to transfer if CMU isn’t what I’m looking for.

Here’s my current list of schools I would be open to transfer to:

  1. Vanderbilt
  2. Northwestern
  3. UT Austin
  4. UCLA
  5. USC
  6. Duke
  7. Michigan
  8. UNC
  9. Georgetown
  10. Berkeley
  11. UVA
  12. Columbia
  13. Penn
  14. Emory

Either because it’s a target school, has better ranking, places jobs in a more preferable geographic area, etc.

I’m not necessarily interested in solely finance or investment banking. All I know right now is I have a passion for business and would like to pursue a career in business.

If I can pull off a 3.5+ with good EC’s or even a 3.7+ at CMU would I have a good chance to be accepted transfer at any of these schools?

2

Northwestern, UCLA, Duke and Columbia do not have undergraduate business.

3

@TomSrOfBoston yeah I know for those schools I would probably just major in economics and they’re so good they still place well in a lot of areas of business

4

transferring to vanderbilt would definitely be possible with a ~3.5 with some EC’s, they are much more lenient with transfer applicants

5

Your high school stats and ACT score will not make you a competitive transfer student as a sophomore. Your only hope for competitive business schools would be a near perfect GPA and great LORs as a junior transfer.

Your best bet is to enjoy CMU and be happy you got into their excellent business school.

6

Honestly, a bunch of your schools don’t offer better opportunities than Tepper (some are worse) regardless of rankings (which are BS because they are easily gamed and not really followed by recruiters anyway) and the ones that do are almost impossible to transfer in to.

7

However, @PurpleTitan , some of the schools on his list might place better into geographical areas he’d prefer to live in!

8

Northwestern, Duke,Georgetown, Columbia, and Penn are reaches. You have a good chance at Vandy, UT Austin, USC, Mich, USC, and Emory. You will have a good chance at UVA, Berkeley, and UCLA if you are in state at those colleges. But frankly, CMU is a great school and only schools that are worth it to transfer are the reach schools, Berkeley and maybe UCLA and UVA.

9

@Dontskipthemoose:

The b-schools at USC, UT-Austin, UMich, UVa, and Cal may also be reaches.

10

@PurpleTitan You are right. The business schools at UT-Austin and UVA are top 10 undergrad programs.