<p>When my friends and relatives got their acceptances to prestigious schools, that set a fire in me to do the same. However my h.s. gpa is around a 2.0. Thus I pose this question? how hard is it to get into these schools as a junior transfer given these credentials?</p>
<p>As a junior transfer, your hs gpa, SAT’s will be of least importance. Your present college, gpa, difficulty of courses undertaken, extra curriculars will be what admissions looks at. However, I am sure you all ready have researched and discovered the low acceptance rates at many of those schools for transfer. Princeton does not accept transfers. Harvard is not accepting transfers for the next couple of years, so I would not be surprised after next year that they then drop transfer acceptance altogether. Yale and Stanford transfer rates are less then 8%. good luck.</p>
<p>your 2.0 gpa is going to prevent you from gaining admissions to any of those schools, sorry. Differentsteps: your hs gpa and sats will most certainly NOT be of least importance, that’s just blatantly wrong. </p>
<p>You want my advice? (1)Change your screen name, it makes you look like a complete tool. (2) use the search function</p>
<p>Actually, hs gpa isn’t necessarily a factor in transfer, depending on the school. Stanford accepted a junior ccc transfer who had less than a 2.0 in hs - though he aced his SATs, joined the Marines, and aced his time at ccc. It is about presenting a compelling picture of who you are as a transfer and what you will bring to the campus.</p>
<p>Even so, the elite schools all have very low transfer rates for juniors… Stanford hovers around 1%. </p>
<p>Think of it this way - if you go to community college, do very well there (as close to 4.0 as possible)… no matter where you transfer to (and you should be able to at minimum get into a state flagship school or a solid private with that new track record) you will have moved away from your hs record and be creating a very good college track for yourself. How you end up with your BA/BS degree is far more important than your hs diploma. </p>
<p>Remember - HYPS type schools are out of reach for 90% of college bound hs students and out of reach for an additional 90% - 100% of junior transfers. You’re in good company. There are plenty of smart, driven, talented, focused students who go to strong (but not HYPS) colleges all of the time.</p>
<p>Use HYPS types as your reaches, once you get into your cc career, find at least 3 solid matches and a few safeties. By the time you finish up your cc and are ready to transfer, you’ll be happy that you did your research and did a solid job in the transfer process. The rest is out of your hands and will depend on what admissions are looking for that particular year.</p>
<p>Annika</p>
<p>generally when schools take someone with a horrible HS record they have a compelling reason to transfer and have spent time out in the world doing something interesting with their lives. You only want to go to these schools for prestige and it will show in your essays. Start looking at schools that are within your reach.</p>
<p>jwlstn.. Sorry, but you are incorrect. As a junior transfer, your college accomplishment will weight significantly more than hs work and SAT. Search the boards and you will find that I am correct.</p>
<p>I’ve been on these boards a long time and there are VERY few people that have gotten into the elite schools with bad hs grades. Some schools are more lenient than others but if you are talking HYSM then you are absolutely and totally wrong. </p>
<p>Even the guy who got into Stanford with bad HS grades had an almost perfect SAT. I’m not saying it’s impossible but to encourage people to just think that their 2.0 HS gpa is not going to hold them back in admissions to top schools is just silly so please stop with the disinformation.</p>
<p>Please find me more than a handful of people who got into Stanford, Harvard Yale or MIT or other elite schools with a poor HS gpa and SAT that didn’t have an amazing hook.</p>
<p>jwstln you’re advice is noted. Anyway besides ranting about how I won’t get in, I want more advice on how I could actually do it. I know its going to be tough and I know that the odds are heavily against me. Btw jwstln, my hs gpa was not what it is because I did drugs, or slacked. I spent time doing high level research at Albany Med in bionanotechnology. My research has been published in one of the most prestigious European scientific journals. And jwstln may I ask where you transferred to?</p>
<p>Anyway what about these schools, are they doable (btw im going to be a freshmen in fall so I don’t have a college gpa yet)?</p>
<p>JHU
Emory
Duke
Berkeley (I live in NY)
McGill
Brandeis
Washington University in St. Louis
University of California–San Francisco (NY resident)
Pomona College</p>
<p>I’m doing pre-med and all of these schools have very good pre-med programs.</p>
<p>iwantprestige - you will need to present a “full package” as a transfer student to get into selective colleges. One of the factors will be maturity - how you handle setbacks, how you handle yourself with other people. Your comments to jhwstln (“may I ask where you transfered to?”) seemed like a cheap shot and aiming to be rude. You obviously will want to try and hide that kind of immaturity in your transfer essays, but I am a strong believer that unless you change yourself from the inside (vs faking it for the essay) - you will have a hard time convincing admissions officers of your sincerity and overall maturity.</p>
<p>Find one or two ECs that you feel passionate about that stretch you both academically and as a person. In order to compete with these other folks who graduated HS with a 2.0 or lower and got into HYPS - you will need to show a type a maturity that SHINES through in your personal essays and that professors deeply and truly believe about you and will rave about in their recommendations about you. </p>
<p>It is easy to advise a person to get a 4.0 or take the right series of classes. It is almost impossible to advise a person how to live life in such a way that their maturity becomes a major selling point. For the Stanford man - he was in the Marines for 4 years… that is the type of character building that you will need to be competitive with and it simply can’t be faked and your professors won’t be able to fake it for you in their letters of recommendations, either. </p>
<p>No matter how prestigous your research was that got published, it is less impressive in my opinion because you were not able to <em>balance</em> your life between passions and your schoolwork. It is my impression that these elite schools are not looking for people who display this kind of uneveness… I’m not saying it is impossible, but I think on the whole you will need to move WAY beyond that one “star” in your “resume” and build your transfer based on what you accomplish in the next 1.5 years.</p>
<p>Annika</p>
<p>Why not just look back through your previous threads? You’ve made quite a few? Will having a different name change anything?</p>
<p>Annika, I think that as long as I find a good research topic I can do what you said, however don’t doubt my sincerity or my maturity based off a single post. </p>
<p>Anyway this deviating from the point of this thread. I understand that the best colleges are a dream and I probably won’t get in. Anyway what about those 2nd tier schools that I mentioned above? How much impact will my hs record have in the transfer process?</p>
<p>If anyone has any other colleges that I could look into I would appreciate it as long as it is ranked within the top 50 (anything below that is insignificant). My intended major is premed.</p>
<p>jwlstn, whether someone’s high school GPA is high or low, you will never be able to find a “handful” of students that have transferred to HYSM on this one site. Like annika said, the acceptance rate for transfers are VERY low…for EVERYBODY- even those with hooks and nearly perfect SATs…So the fact that you haven’t seen many transfers to HYSM is not because their HS gpa was low but rather because there aren’t many transfers that are accepted in general.</p>
<p>iwant> I don’t think that UCSF has any undergraduate degrees.</p>
<p>UCSF doesn’t do undergraduate. </p>
<p>Also, </p>
<p>JHU
Emory
Duke
Berkeley (I live in NY)
McGill
Brandeis
Washington University in St. Louis
University of California–San Francisco (NY resident)
Pomona College</p>
<p>are NOT 2nd tier by any means. It is difficult alone to get into these schools during high school as you need high SATs, GPAs, ECs like any other top school.</p>
<p>Also, you need to focus more on your current work in your community college (or wherever you are at). Excel through that first, do some valuable work, get fabulous recommendations, and be more mature. It’s good to start thinking now, but know this: you transfer only after your second year in a CC or w.e. college you are at. So you got two years to work. Good luck.</p>
<p>When I started attending ccc, I did not know how valuable it would be to find a mentor. I didn’t even think I deserved one - this was “just” community college. I was lucky, a professor “found” me and started giving me all sorts of advice starting with encouraging me to think about applying to several universities that I had already dismissed as out of my reach. We’ll find out if they are still out of my reach when I apply next year - but the real value is that I was able to approach my time at ccc much more productively and pursue the routes that would be the most fruitful. It took several months to realize that she was acting as a mentor (a big “duh” moment for me) - so I got lucky.</p>
<p>Since then, I have learned how to seek out the advice from professors - and knowing which ones to approach that would have helpful insights. One of the things the OP will probably want to do is to excell in the classroom (not just book smarts, but as an all-around good classmate and showing mature classroom demeanor) so that the OP can start getting some advice in the field, so to speak, rather than on the boards. While I have gotten good advice on CC, the bottom line has been that the actual relationships with the professors who believe in me and know my dreams have been the biggest boost overall to my future college/career path. CC boards have helped to fill in gaps here and there, but nothing can replace a professor that has gone through it already and knows the field intimately.</p>
<p>Find a mentor who knows what you want to do and knows about colleges that will fit your profile (your strengths and career goals). Maybe a top-50 will be that match, maybe there is another path that hasn’t been considered.</p>
<p>Annika</p>
<p>thanks annika, that helped.</p>
<p>powerbomb What are you talking about? There are plenty of people on these boards who have been accepted to those schools for transfer and almost EVERY one of them were competitive out of high school and went to a peer school. Why would those schools ever pick someone with a 2.0 hs gpa when they already have hundreds of applicants with perfect grades and SAT’s at peer schools?</p>
<p>If you guys want to hold on to this idea that Yale or Stanford isn’t going to care that you dicked around your four years in high school instead of applying yourself, go ahead. Your rejection letters should be a nice wake up call.</p>
<p>everybody wants to goto these schools including those “2nd tier” schools you mentioned. realistically, you will have to wait until your 4th semester to transfer to even mildly offset your HS record. Given that your college record is stellar (nearly 4.0), you’ll have a shot at a better school (top 40). you also need a better reason to transfer..</p>
<p>Aaron Polhamus, a transfer from Western Washington University (a no-name public) to Stanford University then Rhodes Scholarship winner. All after “dicking around” in high school.</p>
<p>[Bellingham</a>, Whatcom County Local News | Bellingham Herald](<a href=“http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/244478.html]Bellingham”>http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/244478.html)</p>
<p>wow, Aaron Polhamus is my hero.</p>
<p>and to jw’s point. I know the odds are against me, but its not going to stop me from trying as hard as I can. I only have a chance if I apply, it may be remote - but its still a chance. And jw - its a better alternative than just “dicking around” on this website.</p>