Transferring to Stanford from a CC? Please help me out guys!

Transfer Students
1

<p>Hey guys,</p>

<p>I am a late bloomer, which means that I pretty much started thinking about college this last year. There JUST is not enough "very's" in the world to describe miserable I feel that I did not take action in high school. I read a lot of Camus and existentialist stuff, what can I say....! They should seriously consider outlawing existentialist lit from underage minors, the demotivation effect can sometimes be much worse than alcohol. </p>

<p>SO BEFORE you guys attack me with the Mr Spock "Impossible!": YES I realize that it is very very hard to transfer to Stanford from a community college...but I NEED and seek your guidance, experience and advise on how to increase my chances, since I am so new to the game. Literally, it's almost as if I came out of a cave just recently and found out about the opportunities I missed ... :( But it is now my DREAM OF DREAMS to go there...I mean come on, who are these people who DO get accepted as transfers? </p>

<p>Here are my stats if it helps:</p>

<p>-Home schooled, graduated semi-early, with a 3.7 gpa
-Still yet to take the SAT
-Currently enrolled in a state honor's society and an honors program (it is pretty legit, they actually have an excellent agreement with UCLA)
-Planning to major in math; minor astrophysics
-I am mostly taking all honors classes, except for maybe like 3 or 4 out of my entire planned career here at my CC, I am and will be taking all honors, including my major's classes. </p>

<p>I know it's not much, but I need your help regarding how to strengthen my resume and also make myself stand out to the admissions officers. What can I do? Should I travel up there and speak to them personally? Pick up internships, research opportunities ( I'm a newbie to the physics field though), ANY ADVICE IS APPRECIATED! Thank you!!</p>

2

<p>This may not be what you would like to hear but the 1% of transfer students that are accepted to Stanford, I can safely say that the majority of them are transferring from ivy leagues such as Harvard or Yale.</p>

3

<p>I’d have to disagree with pokeprad. Needless to say its going to be incredibly tough, but you dont have to be from an ivy to transfer to stanford. Usually the acceptance rate hovers around 2%, but the acceptance rate this year was a little over 4%.</p>

<p>I would recommend contacting the CC user “chasethecarrot” they were in a similar situation to you and they were waitlisted. I know its not an acceptance, but its a good start. Best of luck!</p>

4

<p>^Agreed with above.
It’s not impossible, it’s just incredibly difficult.</p>

5

<p>My experience is different but similar enough that it might be of some help. </p>

<p>I had A’s and B’s in High School (with a single C in Health class). I had a 2060-2090 (giving ranges to prevent outting) on the SAT (no studying) and ended up in the top 10% of my class but with only about 3 AP Classes. I took no AP exams and no SAT Subject Tests.</p>

<p>I was pretty unfocused in High School and didn’t work up to my potential.</p>

<p>I enrolled at a mediocre state college and halfway through my first semester, I began to feel the same way as you. I felt as though I had ruined my life and missed a bunch of opportunities. I became really determined. I combed sites like this and spent a ton of my free time researching career options. </p>

<p>I studied furiously for the SAT and retook it while taking 17 credits of classes. I ended up with a score between 2200 and 2300. I got straight A’s through my first two years, joined a bunch of extracurricular activities, got leadership positions and sucked up to professors. My LORs were incredible. I spent something like 700 dollars on transfer application costs (I used all of the money I saved from working a minimum wage fast food job the summer before). My college GPA is 3.95.</p>

<p>This hard work paid off. I have now been accepted to Cornell and have been put on the waiting list for Brown and Georgetown. I will likely be attending Cornell. I could never have dreamed of any of this coming out of high school</p>

<p>I would say the following: Get extremely focused. Get a 4.0 (not a 3.9 or a 3.8) if you want to go to Stanford. Study for the SATs like your life depends on it and get a 2300+. Join clubs and get leadership positions. Write your essays for transfer early so that you have plenty of time to revise (I waited until the day before the due date to start them which was a huge mistake and may have cost me entrance to Penn and Columbia). Talk to your professors after class and ask them about their research interests, etc. Suck up to them and get sick LORs from them. Try to get some relevant research/internship experience.</p>

<p>That said, getting into Stanford is NOT a guarantee should you do all of this. In fact, statistically it will be extremely difficult. My friend goes to CC and has something like a 3.8 GPA. He takes really hard CS and Math classes and gets great grades. He wanted to get into Stanford or other top schools as a CS major. He has been rejected from Stanford and other top schools that he wanted to go to. </p>

<p>It’s possible to get into Stanford and you should strive for that. However, the process is somewhat of a crapshoot. There are a million great applicants and, at a certain point, the selection process is arbitrary. </p>

<p>But even if you don’t get into Stanford, there are a number of ridiculously good schools that you could easily get into if you follow what I said (4.0 GPA, sick SAT, extracurriculars, etc). </p>

<p>Also, this book helped me a lot:</p>

<p>How to Become a Straight-A Student: The Unconventional Strategies Real College Students Use to Score High While Studying Less</p>

6

<p>This is a digression, but you mentioned that existential literature demotivated you. What existential literature have you been reading? Nietzsche and Sartre are some of the most empowering authors I’ve read. Camus can be a bit of a downer, but he was an absurdist, not existentialist.</p>

7

<p>Hello everyone!
I would like to sincerely thank all of you for kindly taking the time to post the helpful suggestions, especially RedSilver. I have ordered the book you mentioned and actually it was just what I needed as a returning student, so THANK YOU for that and the awesome tips! :)</p>

<p>To rebut to your digression, augustus1: First off, I would have to agree that Nietzsche has a lot of empowering messages in his books. (Although the problem is some text I might have misunderstood or understood in a different way, which was reflective of my attitude). I also disagree with you on the statement that Camus wasn’t an existentialist. Although he is primarily an absurdist, he always seems to communicate existential ideas through his literature. Never delved much into Sarte. While the aforementioned two as well as many many other authors may have empowering messages, I never really bothered with that. That is, in my typical cynical teenage brain, I would seek literature which preached messages that matched my mind state at the time. Thus, I sunk myself deeper by finding a weird “comfort” in classic downers like Camus, Foucault, Kierkegaard, some of Nietzsche’s writings, Kafka, as well as A LOT, and I mean A LOT of existential and depressing vintage French film, lol. Combine that with my predisposition at the time, and voila, a lethal combo. I guess it really all depends on the state of your mind at the time of reading…because it is VERY interesting one can interpret Nietzsche as an empowering author, which I now totally understand. You can understand him in way that DOES empower you to build yourself up, or be a young idiot like I was and take it the wrong way :P.</p>