<p>Well look it will be paramount, how rare are transfers to the big name schools? The only transfer I ever knew was this kid who I worked with during the summer and he transferred from Georgetown to Yale, he still had the top grades.</p>
<p>Anyways I am not too familiar with this process myself but I have been taught by my high school teachers that good grades and test scores in your high school years are what you need to get into a top college. Maybe I was told wrong so I will take this time to apologize but still, this whole thing doesn’t make sense to me.</p>
<p>I’ll just respond to all of you posts in here.</p>
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<p>First of all, I’ve seen your stats, and I commend you on working hard to achieve your position as salutatorian. That’s not an easy feat by any means, and you should be proud of yourself. However, please do realize that those students who didn’t give a damn about academics in high school are not destined to live a life of mediocrity at a community college and are not preordained to spend the rest of their adult lives in some prosaic job that they hate. I’m not sure exactly what your counselors told you, but it’s possible that you misheard them; then again, it is possible that they left out the option of transferring. You’re right that those students who perform poorly throughout high school will more than likely end up at a college which suits their academic standards, but again, this only speaks for a student’s options immediately out of high school. I have seen many cases in which students have done a complete 180 turn in terms of grades from high school to college. Personally, I now try my hardest to attain the highest grades possible, since I don’t want to end up being the idiot that I was during the first two years of my high school career. Inversely, there are those students who have impeccable grades in high school, yet nearly fail out of college. Therefore, high school grades–just like SAT scores–are by no means an absolute indicator of how well one will perform on a collegiate level.</p>
<p>I honestly can’t blame you for believing that poor high school stats are impossible to overcome, since I used to believe the same thing. However, I implore you to now change your stance on this position. </p>
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<p>If we’re talking about the top colleges which actually allow transfers (i.e. Stanford, Yale and MIT), then yea, those are pretty rare since their transfer acceptance rates hover around 2-4% (not exact numbers, but you get the point). I won’t argue that you’ll still need great HS stats and some pretty decent college figures to get into the top five, but that’s not where the story ends. There are people on this site who have nearly failed out of high school, yet have been able to get into UC Berkeley as transfers. Then there’s those who have gotten into the University of Chicago with 3.5 (I’ll have to search the board for that story again.) There’s also been a bunch of people who have graduated high school with 3.0s, went to community college for two years, and were accepted as transfers to Cornell. </p>
<p>As you go along your collegiate career, your high school stats will matter less and less as each year progresses, which is the primary reason why some people with poor high school stats are accepted to top schools. I’m honestly not too familiar with other graduate schools, but for the purposes of law school admissions, the top 14 law schools in this country–or any other lower-caliber law school for that matter–couldn’t care less how you performed in high school, since your college course work speaks for you competency as a potential graduate student.</p>
<p>Thank you for your apology, and I too must apologize for the unnecessary facetiousness of my posts. It was just pretty offensive for you to claim that the success stories in the other thread were fictive, but I understand why you may feel that way. Just know now that life is not always restricted by the dumb mistakes some of us make during high school.</p>
<p>If you have any other questions about transferring, feel free to ask.</p>
<p>Well why not ask, so you are saying for the top 5 schools I was correct, you cannot get in to Brown University for example as a transfer if you had average grades in high school?</p>
<p>After being on this site myself, I am feeling worried about college admissions myself since I see kids with 4.0s wetting their pants about getting into Duke and I was confident that I would be a shoe in for Georgetown with a 3.8 GPA, 2240 SAT and Ethnic Minority status (black and proud). </p>
<p>I personally have not known people to accomplish such high feats so my conception was skewed, thus I had a superficial view on this transferring topic. I am hoping the University I get into is the one I spend my four years at. I’ll check on this thread topic tomorrow, I gotta catch some Zzzs and get to bed. Apology accepted.</p>
<p>By the way, why don’t Princeton allow transfers?</p>
<p>Yes, I did. I believe you meant to say the former as opposed to the latter, so I’ll just respond according to my assumption. As I said, the top schools, such as Yale, MIT and Stanford, accept a very small amount of transfers, thus meaning that one would have to posts great stats in all fields in order for a successful matriculation to be feasible. However, there are other top schools, such as Columbia, whose transfer rates are actually higher than their freshman admission rates (this may be a slightly specious argument since I believe the transfer admissions rate also incorporates Columbia GS, but I’m not sure). There’s more that could be listed, but you can just look it up if you’re that interested.</p>
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<p>I’ve never seen Brown ranked in the top-5, but yes, it is possible to get in there with high school grades which were just ok. I’ve heard that they’re not too transfer friendly, but if you’re an amazing transfer applicant, it could happen. I’m sure you’d be able to find a few examples of poor high school students who transferred into Brown if you scoured the this forum. </p>
<p>If that guy can get into Yale after being at a community college with poor high school grades, then anything is possible. Honestly, his case is probably very rare and is the exception rather than the rule, but hey, it is possible.</p>
<p>edit: Here’s a guy who got into Brown with a 3.4 high school gpa. I probably wouldn’t say a 3.4 is bad, but it’s not really great either.</p>
<p>To answer your question, my guess is that the retention rate at Princeton is so high that there’s simply not enough space for people to transfer into the school. That’s just an assumption, though.</p>
<p>east89: Don’t you have a hard time believing some of that stuff though? It makes for a great story but I find it hard to believe at word of mouth. Well, looks like it is possible then.</p>
<p>I think Princeton may be too snobby so they might not accept transfers.</p>
<p>Also everyone, chance me on my topic plz! I have received no replies so far.</p>
<p>“Yes, I did. I believe you meant to say the former as opposed to the latter, so I’ll just respond according to my assumption. As I said, the top schools, such as Yale, MIT and Stanford, accept a very small amount of transfers, thus meaning that one would have to posts great stats in all fields in order for a successful matriculation to be feasible. However, there are other top schools, such as Columbia, whose transfer rates are actually higher than their freshman admission rates (this may be a slightly specious argument since I believe the transfer admissions rate also incorporates Columbia GS, but I’m not sure). There’s more that could be listed, but you can just look it up if you’re that interested.”</p>
<p>Well, excuse me, I wasn’t trying to establish any particular source of argument with you other than to generalize a statement that people usually would precede such a selection of schools over the other ones. I never asked you to give me the percentage rate of acception into these schools as a transfer(as I have known them way before you did) nor did I request an anecdotal research from you. Matriculation into a less prestigious school usually allows you the opportunity to recreate the endurance of being able to get accepted into those schools as collegiate career continues. But since it digresses the generalization, no need to get too profoundly impetuous here.</p>
<p>Honestly, I believe most of the posters on here have no reason to lie. That’s not to say that there aren’t a couple of fabulists in that thread, but a lot of them have stuck around the board after they transferred into more prestigious schools, so if they were lying, someone probably would have called their bluff by now. It’d be pretty hard to keep up that lie anyway, since I know some of them post on their school’s section of the board and speak about aspects of the school that only students would know about, such as social life.</p>
<p>I believe Princeton did at one time accept transfers, but they changed their policy just like Harvard.</p>
<p>I can’t really help you with the chances though :(</p>
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<p>Just so you know, I didn’t type that post with malicious intent. You said that most people would prefer to go to more selective schools such as Yale, Stanford or MIT over Cornell. I simply said that while these schools may be more world renowned, other very prestigious universities are not as difficult to transfer into. It seemed to me that you were trying to make a point regarding transfer admissions, but I guess not.</p>
<p>Also, since I don’t know you and you also do not know me, let’s try to not make assumptions over who knew the transfer admission rates of certain colleges first. I don’t see how it would make a difference anyway, but I figured I would just address that since you spoke about it.</p>
<p>Also worth mentioning that many law school applications (including those at top schools) ask for approximate HS rank. I always put mine down (lower than a 2.5, guess what rank that was); I don’t think it hurt me.</p>
<p>Why else would kids be transferring to top elite schools from a community college? To replace their record for reputation? No. To do better and be able to get accepted into Top Grad schools.
If you’ve been in college for two years, better colleges weigh less solely on the performance of your mediocre work and prefer the greater current work since it values the importance of further academic prospect.
Thus, why would anyone working for graduate school admission commitee care about what you did in High School.</p>
<p>Uh, actually I wasn’t. I think you’re just making an attempt at being an ass. It’s cute, but you probably have better things to do with your time. I know I do, so I’ll just end this here. You can respond if you really care to try to carry on a useless internet argument.</p>
<p>I teach at a community college. don’t assume that a CCC transfer had a weak hs record. Often they are there for financial reasons. The first generation kid with strong academics and a great story of persoanl achievement may be what you are seeing in some of these transfers.</p>
<p>East89: Thanks 4 the information, I hope I don’t end up transferring out of the school I go to. I want to stick around my college of choice for all 4 yrs.</p>
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<li>everyone plz chance me at the schools I applied to</li>
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