transferring to Columbia(advice plz)

hi, I am thinking about transferring to Columbia, long story short I messed up pretty bad during freshmen year of hs and I ended up graduating with a 3.9 GPA(ik some people think that’s high) my sat scores were also pretty bad(1260) i ended up getting rejected from Columbia and I am now set to enroll in a local college(in NYC) I’m pretty sure I can keep a GPA above 3.5 and ive already retaken the sat and scored a 1490(after lots of studying). i am set to study computer engineering this fall but I now really want to study business and I plan on applying as a transfer for sophomore year. what are the chances of transferring to Columbia or a similar ivy like Cornell and stern school at nyu for me. and can i get any advice. thanks. also do the courses i take in my first year affect my chances of admission or are all college courses judged the same.

With a 3.9 GPA & a 1490 SAT, you might want to consider taking a gap year & reapplying for freshman admission rather than enrolling in a local college and attempting to transfer.

If you apply as a transfer, will you apply to schools other than Columbia ?

Nevertheless, your post asks interesting questions & I hope that others respond.

Are you limiting your target schools to Columbia, NYU Stern & Cornell for business ? Do you need financial aid/merit scholarship money ?

If so, a gap year makes sense as most merit scholarship money is awarded to freshmen. With your numbers (1490 SAT & 3.9 GPA), you might get a generous scholarship from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business or the University of Richmond among many others.

If you do not need financial aid, then consider adding Michigan Ross to your list.

P.S. You can find a school’s transfer acceptance rate by searching for its Common Data Set on the internet. Vanderbilt, for example, accepts transfer students at a much higher rate than it accepts freshmen.

I wish I could take a gap year but my parents wouldn’t allow it, so I’m stuck just applying as a transfer to these schools, I don’t plan on attending graduate school so my that’s why I’m focusing on ivy and similar schools for undergrad degree, schools I would be interested in transferring to after my first year would be nyu, Columbia, and Cornell, UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, as well as UPenn, Yale, and Harvard(impossible I know) but still worth a try.

Are you about to start at a community college, or a four year university? Is it somewhere where you would be okay staying for four years?

To me it looks like you are aiming at a bunch of reach schools. I don’t see any school on your list where I would actually expect you to get accepted after one year at community college (if that is where you are headed). You need to have a realistic plan that you and your parents are okay with. It is okay to reach for the moon, but only if you have an alternative that will work.

I agree with others that taking a gap year and reapplying to a longer and more realistic list of schools is probably safer than starting at a place where you don’t want to stay for four years with the assumption that you will be able to transfer to a top school.

Are you aware that business is only a concentration at Columbia, that you have to apply for it in the spring of 2nd or 3rd year, that it is selective (less than 50/year), that there are specific pre-reqs you have to do before you apply, and that you will have to fit those in around catching up on the Core requirements?

That will not get you transfer admission at Ivy level schools.

You were and still are aiming at schools where your stats put you in the bottom 10% of admits, who usually are strongly hooked applicants.

Transfer admissions to top colleges is exceedingly competitive. You cannot count on this working out. Keep in mind that if you want to transfer after one year most colleges still take your HS stats into account. Additionally (if it is an issue for you) at many schools there is less aid available for transfer students as compared to freshmen.

For example, per the Columbia website: “Because space in the sophomore and junior classes is limited, admission is highly competitive. We typically admit fewer than 10 percent of the applicants for transfer admission each year.”

In general I think it is a terrible idea to start one college with the intent of transferring out. This will stand in the way of your making meaningful friendships, developing relationships with professors, and getting involved on campus. Then if your transfer doesn’t work out as planned you will be really stuck. I’d go to the college you enrolled in with the intent of staying all four years. It is fine to throw in a couple of transfer applications but don’t count on it working out.

I just put that out there, Ik i need a 4.0 basically so ill just try my best to attain that.

its a 4 year college

I don’t think ivies are that out of reach for me(i was waitlisted at brown and nyu)

Of course, nothing is impossible. But the transfer acceptance rates at those schools is a fraction of the admissions rate for first years.

You asked:

As @happy1 has pointed out, Columbia says less than 10%. NYU Stern says “almost all” transfers come from within NYU and that the few external transfer admits have ‘exceptional’ secondary school & university records. Cornell is impossible to judge, b/c they have very strong relationships with community colleges (who are the bulk of their transfer acceptances- you could consider that path), and of course their informal deferred admission path account for a high but unknown % of transfer acceptances. You can do the homework for the rest of your wish list (UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, as well as UPenn, Yale, and Harvard).

The courses can matter both in general and in particular. For example, Cornell Dyson requires external transfer students to have (or be currently enrolled in) 2 college writing/ English courses, micro, calc I and stats; and prefers macro, a year of bio and a semester of either chemistry or physics as well- all with a B or better of course. Stern also wants calc & writing classes. For admissions to ‘general’ Arts & Sciences-type programs, it’s not so much specific classes as it is rigor (same as high school), and some link to the story you are telling as to why you want to transfer to that school (besides the prestige factor, obvs).

You say that you ‘messed up pretty bad during freshmen year’, but your GPA (if UW) is very high. From here it looks as though the mistake was not bothering to improve your SAT score before you applied to top name schools. You must have a pretty good story to tell (or a hook of some sort) to have gotten waitlisted at Brown with an SAT in the bottom 25% of accepted students, so I can see why you fancy your chances as a transfer (and why the ego sting of going to a less shiny place- can we guess Fordham?- is so hard to get over). But you asked for advice, and the advice you are getting is: don’t get your hopes up / it is much harder as a transfer / treat your current college as if you are staying (even as you do applications)- b/c you might not have a choice. The suggestion I will add is to look at more than just those few names.

thanks for the advice!