I come from one of the top high schools in my state and I get good grades in honors and AP classes. I had my sights set on Duke (rejected ED1), Tufts (rejected ED2), and USC (rejected RD). After those rejections, I was left with several waitlists and acceptances. I ultimately decided to go to George Washington. I won’t be moving in until August and I’ve started looking into transferring to more academically competitive colleges that aren’t directly in the middle of a city. Compared to the other students in my grade that committed to GW, I get significantly better grades in harder classes. I feel like I’m settling for GW and I want to go somewhere else. If I apply to transfer to universities like the ones listed above, what’s the best way to go about it? I am planning to be a bio major. What classes should I enroll in? What kinds of ECs look the best? How can I form relationships with my professors so I can get good recs? Any help would be much appreciated.
There was something lacking in your applications that resulted in those rejections: essay may have shown a sense of entitlement for example. Get a 4.0 at GW. Transfer acceptance rates at elite schools are generally lower than freshman acceptance rates.
^^^ Agreed. I also noticed, @greekgirl123 from your prior posts that this application process has been a trial for you. I would encourage you to give GW a chance to become your school. You haven’t even moved in yet. Be sure you don’t limit your involvement and relationships with other students by having “transferring” front and center of your mindset. It’s like planning a wedding celebration while hiring the best divorce attorney in town.
Really? What did you do all through high school? You surely needed a ton of recommendations from your teachers-it’s no different in college. Show up, do your work, ask questions, don’t be a jerk, and say thank you. It’s not rocket science.
GW is an excellent school-given this year’s pool (of which my older D is one), I would feel very good about where you got in if I were you. “Settling” infers that you had a better option and you didn’t take it. It sounds like GW was the best option available to you.
That’s not “settling”, that’s an opportunity.
Maybe the kind of activities that demonstrate your passion for being involved with your fellow students and opportunities at your college? Oh, wait.
It’s best to apply to a different set of schools rather than retrying the ones that rejected you this time around. I don’t know why you were rejected, but it’s hard to become a significantly new candidate in a short period of time. Use your acceptances and rejections from this year as indicators of the right level of selecticity and apply there and lower. You didn’t love your safeties this cycle; don’t make that mistake two years in a row. As @TQfromtheU notes, your focus on transferring will ruin bonding with GW. That’s going to cause problems if you don’t get into a transfer school you actually like. Safeties will be super important.
3.6 GPA and 30 ACT did not get you into Duke, Tufts or USC even as a legacy. You will be rejected again as a sophomore transfer applicant.
Did you get into the honors program at GW? I hear it is excellent. Best you enjoy GW. Why did you apply there if you were not willing to attend?
@greekgirl123 A few years ago I ran into a friend of mine who I had not seen in a while. It was summer and her kid was off to college. I asked where her student was going and she said George Washington, with merit aid. I told her that was awesome - they are one of those families who make too much to get much if any fin aid, but not so much that dropping 200k+ over 4 years was going to be easy either. But Mom and student were a bit disappointed. She had very good grades, decent test scores, great ECs had worked very hard, but had not gotten into her top choices (Cal, an ivy, maybe Penn or Columbia - been a while now - and a few other “top 15” schools whose names I can’t recall.
I got a bit annoyed - her student wanted to be a lawyer active in politics. They were happy to get good aid, she wanted to go back east and GW is a really interesting school in the middle of where she thought she might eventually want to be. I told her to have her student give the school a chance. Rankings really mean very little, especially when you have a chance to land right in the heart of what you think you might want to do. She thanked me for the pep-talk. I went home and wrote her student the same thing. That they should be proud of themselves for “earning” tens of thousands of dollars in merit aid that and they they should shift their perspective and get ready to get everything they possibly could out of an institution that had tons to offer.
Cut to September. I get an email from my friend. Her student had started classes at GW. In the first week her kid had their first art class - in the national gallery of art. The guest lecturer at the intro to law course was a women by the name of Sandra Day O’Connor and her kid was feeling like maybe GW was going to work out after all. That student is graduating soon and has found GW to be a great fit for them.
So all a long way of saying, you have GW. You will not be the smartest kid on the campus. You will never read all the books in the library. You will not have time to participate in all the clubs that will interest you. So my advice would be not to spend your time looking past the school but instead dive in with both feet. If you still feel after a semester or two that you are not a good fit for the school, if you have really applied yourself you will have a resume and transcript that will interest other schools.
It’s not hard to transfer, but to transfer to a more competitive school might be a challenge (and is, in my opinion, the wrong reason to transfer.) Transferring for a better fit makes sense. But I would try to change my attitude a bit before you get there so you can get all you can out of the school, whether you are there 4 months or 4 years.
If you try to apply as a transfer after 1 year, you will only have one semester’s worth of college grades, meaning that your high school stats will carry a lot of weight. If you were rejected this year, one semester of college, even a 4.0 Gpa, won’t change much of your application. Duke and Tufts would still be high reaches, especially considering that transfer acceptance rates are usually lower. I think USC actually has a relatively high transfer rate so maybe you can try your luck there. You can also look to retake the ACT, because a 30 will not get you into Duke or Tufts without something else that is exceptional.
GW is a fine school, but if you really want to transfer, I suggest you look for more realistic options. As for tips on how to handle transferring, join extracurricular activities and clubs that you are interested in and try to get leadership positions. Smaller classes will give you more face time and a personal relationship with your professor, but you may want to get a rec from a professor in your intended major. From what I know though, biology classes are usually pretty big. You also need to demonstrate a legitimate reason for transferring and why the new school will satisfy your academic goals better than GW. Transferring for better prestige won’t fly.
It is premature to think that transferring is appropriate or necessary. Adjust your attitude. You aren’t too good for GW, and it has a lot to offer. Go in the fall looking to make friends and get the most out of it that you can. You will likely be pleasantly surprised if you let yourself be open to the opportunities.
Not to mention any school that can claim Tammy Duckworth as a student has got something going on…
Thank you for all your comments! Just to give a point of reference, my current gpa is a 3.63. The average gpa of kids accepted to Tufts from my school is a 3.7 and USC is a 3.61. The Duke gpa is quite a bit higher, 3.82, but the average ACT of the students accepted from my school is a 30. When I compare myself on Naviance, my gpa is not vastly different from that of accepted students
Perhaps they were bringing something else to the table. No reason to second guess that now. Love the one that loves you back.
^ It’s not all about GPAs and test scores.
Based on your ACT score alone, you’re seem like you’ll solidly in the middle of the pack at GWU. That doesn’t sound like “settling” to me. It sounds as if you’ll be working hard. Congratulations on being admitted to a school that will challenge you!
For the other schools you listed as your first choices, your ACT score put you in the bottom of the middle 50 (below for Duke), which made you an unlikely admit at any of them unless you were bringing something else unusual to the table.
I’m a bit curious how three such different schools ended up #1, 2 and 3 in your book, but no time for regrets now. Savor what you have in hand.
As a high school senior, I got rejected from Rice, Johns Hopkins, UCLA, and Berkeley. I decided to attend a local LAC. I added 5 points to my ACT score, got a 4.0, got involved in a research project, played a college sport, formed great relationships with my professors, and went through several essay revisions over the course of a couple months. As a college freshman, I got accepted to Rice, Brown, Vanderbilt, and Wesleyan. It is possible.
However, I warn you like others above have: don’t go into this fall semester with the plan to transfer. I did not decide I wanted to transfer until winter break and I am really glad I gave my college a shot; it just wasn’t the right fit. Even still, if you do still decide to transfer, be careful: January/February was one of the lowest points of my life because I was set on transferring and unconsciously began shutting myself out socially because I did not see the point of forming relationships with people I was about to leave. HUGE mistake, especially if I had not gotten into any of the schools I applied to. It turned out well though, I ended up making some really good friends there at the end that made it really tough to leave (tough in a good way).
Last word of advice: if you do it right, the transfer application process will take up as much time as an entire class. During application season I was taking 18 credits and my sport was in season; it was far too much.
@Shenanigans1 what made you want to transfer from your small LAC? Also, what changed in your app that made Rice go from rejecting you the first time to ultimately accepting you?
@greekgirl123 : @Shenanigans1 spells that out pretty clearly in the first paragraph. Short version: Worked hard, made the best of the experience she was having, presented that information in the application.
@Shenanigans1 are you decided on Rice?
@Dontskipthemoose Yes.