I know transfer rates vary with university. Harvard for example, exhibits a 1.04% transfer rate, whereas UPenn has 9.4% transfer rate.
If attending a school like Duke, Northwestern, Brown, Dartmouth, and transferring to a school like Yale, Columbia, Penn, would your chances be significantly higher considering you performed well enough in HS to gain admission to the first group, and continued performing well in college?
Transferring largely depends on your ACADEMIC reasons to leave. And with schools like Duke, Northwestern, etc. you will have a harder time trying to prove that.
Oh really? Wow so it is harder? Damn that’s unfortunate. Can anyone speak on this regarding someone wanting to transfer top 20 from another top 20 and being unable to do so.
If you got in to those aforementioned schools, why would you want to transfer?
@PurpleTitan I didn’t. I am asking a hypothetical.
Why do you think it’s unfortunate, then?
@PurpleTitan Because my dream is HY-Columbia-Penn-MIT-Stanford (didn’t include Princeton because no transfers). I wasn’t admitted to them, but I like the others ones in the first group too, just not as much, and I got admitted to one of them, but I only applied to it in case rejections from HYCPMS, which happened.
I still really like individual things about each of HYCPMS, and its not like I am thinking of transferring because I feel like it. I don’t think I fit very well at the one I was accepted to, nor as they very strong in the program I want to do.
This is why I am trying to decide whether it is optimal to go to this one and try transfer after a year, or go to an instate public, save money, and transfer then. Which would yield me better results from HYCPMS. I know HYSM are very hard to transfer into, so I am okay if I don’t get those. Primarily Penn and Columbia are my focus.
Sure, a student is more likely to selected as a transfer student into a top school if he or she had a good high school record and did well the first two years of college at a well-known place. This assumes the alternative is a student with a worse high school record who wasn’t doing well in the early years of college.
What people are suggesting is that you would have to have a compelling academic reason to move to Penn and Columbia. Specifically, you would have to have a particular interest that you would argue was not being met by Northwestern, etc.
You’re already in CC, right? So go to another school and then transfer again?
Look, success in life isn’t going to come from getting in to a particular school; success in life will come from doing well and taking advantage of opportunities at whatever school you go to. Especially since there’s virtually no difference in opportunities between that first group of schools and the second group. IMO, you should dream about succeeding in life, not about attending particular schools (which, IMO, is a silly teenage thing to do akin to dreaming about dating supermodels).
If you go to state school, there’s no guarantee that you’d be able to successfully transfer anywhere else so you should be happy with the state school.
What are goals? What is this program that you want to do? I’m hard-pressed to think of any program that is “weaker” in any meaningful way at the first group of schools compared to the second group.
@PurpleTitan Sure, so I am interested in an engineering-business combo. The school I was accepted to: Brown, does not have a very strong engineering department. In fact, my local state school has a stronger one. They do not have a business program either although economics there is okay.
H and Y and S aside (which are mainly prestige-based decisions, and honestly, I will just be applying to these schools as transfer because WHY NOT, when you are applying to other schools anyways).
So that leaves M (which has the best engineering department, and their economics is very highly-regarded as well). It also leaves Columbia which has a decent engineering school, and a good economics program, BUT, the deal-sealer is its location in NYC and superior recruitment to many Wall Street firms (espiecally since I am interested in finance). Lastly, is Penn. Penn has a godlike business program (of course, much better than Brown), and a decent engineering school, especially when considering biomedical engineering and computer science.
What’s the state school option? BTW, Brown is a Wall Street target just like the rest. Also, I don’t know about engineering, but Brown CS grads do very well.
Are costs a concern?
Finally, keep in mind that your chances of transferring in to those schools you listed are very low, so realistically, you should be deciding between Brown vs. State school and finishing up there.
@PurpleTitan Penn has a 9.40% acceptance rate. That is not very low.
I am just wondering if the rate would be higher than 9.40%, or lower, if coming from Brown.
In what world is 9.4% not low? That rate means that most likely, you won’t be successful. In any case, UPenn CS isn’t better than Brown (Brown CS grads do better, in fact) and your chances of getting in to anything related to Wharton are close to zero (they would be lower than the overall UPenn admit rate).
@PurpleTitan If I can get into Brown at 7.4% RD and a 3 other >8% but <11% schools, 9.4% transfer at Penn is not impossible. Chances being very low indicate something like 2-3%, but everyone’s definition is different. Getting into Harvard on transfer has a very low chance I would say.
Finally, I wold not transfer to Wharton directly.
I would apply for dual-degree once arriving, or merely take classes there. First I have to make sure that Penn transfer students are allowed to puruse dual-deg or classes (yes, I haven’t thought that far yet bc I am in the early stages).
Once again, I ask you. Does being from Brown make it MORE or LESS likely that I would get into Penn or similar school than being from a state school?
On your transfer app, you’re going to be asked WHY you want to transfer. You’re going to have to come up with s darned good reason why Brown isn’t good enough for you!
I think MORE.
Brown has well-connected faculty who work very closely with undergraduates to help them achieve their academic goals. In many cases, treating the undergrads more as junior colleagues than students. I know this to be true.
Brown’s philosophy is that the students know best the direction of their studies, so I think faculty and administrators would gladly help you matriculate elsewhere, if that is your desire.
Here is an older article about Brown transfers:
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2006/04/26/leaving-the-happiest-ivy-for-other-colleges/
@arwarw Thank you for that insight. Again, I am not saying that I want to transfer from Brown. I will probably attend there for CS. From a nonbiased point of view, is Brown CS more reputable than Penn/Columbia CS? Why doesn’t it rank high, then? Even in undergraduate CS rankings?
@interest82 really study the criteria and basis of the rankings you’re looking at, and that should give you some answers.
Brown CS/econ grads do pretty well, despite rankings:
http://www.brown.edu/campus-life/support/careerlab/post_grad_data/concentration/CSEC
And
Brown CS has world-class faculty that teach their undergrads, and play ping pong with them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andries_van_Dam
Do well your freshmen year at Brown, and you should be in a great position to transfer to Penn. I think Penn takes a lot of transfers, and you would be a rare Brown transfer. Van Dam is a Penn man, and may help you with the transfer - no joke.
Best of luck.
Depending on schools, some top universities （e.g. Stanford）accept many students from CC. But for many schools of that caliber, I’ve checked the accepted transfer students’ groups, and I rarely saw someone who was from CC. Mots of them were from well-known schools like, CMU, JHU, UVA, Tufts, Cornell, etc. Of course it’s gonna be hard to find a reason to transfer if you’re already in an academically strong institution. But if you have a strong reason for transferring, attending an academically renowned school don’t work against you (with an exception for schools that do prefer CC students. It’s clear which schools are and which are not, if you check the last acceptances). Otherwise, it’s better to get 3.9 at JHU, let’s say, than at BMCC, or at least that has been a trend for most schools you mentioned. There are some getting into Yale or Columbia from community college, I’ve seen and heard some, but it’s not as common as transferring from a well-known 4-year institution.
Since you are so rankings-obsessed, here are some pertinent rankings:
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/undergraduate-software-engineering
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/edu/rankings/us/undergraduate-software-engineering-small?trk=edu-rankings-category-switch-link-m