Hi guys I just finished my first semester at UMiami after having to withdraw in the first week in Fall due to my mothers deteriorating health.
I didn’t really like Miami, and UMiami while quite good in STEM instruction (great STEM professors) was socially not really my vibe. It’s very pre-professional and I get the feeling that the social life is very based on fraternity life. Also USC has a great International Relations program that I would like to major in along with doing pre-med courses (I want my career path to be something along the lines of Public Health after graduating from Medical School and be involved in government thus would like a strong IR program)
College GPA: 3.94
Credits Completed: 14
Courses taken:
General Biology II (Evolution and Biodiversity) - 4 Credits (A+)
General Biology II Lab - 1 Credit (A)
Statistical Analysis - 3 Credits (A+)
Psychology - 3 Credits (A+)
English Composition II - 3 Credits (A-)
Courses taking next semester: 15 Credits
General Biology I & Lab
General Chemistry I & Lab
Philosophy 348 (300 Level)
Intro to Business 200
HS GPA: 3.45 (Full IB Diploma)
ACT score: 33 Composite (33 English, 28 Math, 36 Reading, 33 Science)
Only issue is in my first semester I did only 11 credits bc my mother passed away and didn’t think I’d be ready to do a full-time load. So I made up with it by just finishing a statistics course this summer to catch up on credits. Not sure how this would look to USC.
High school stats don’t matter. Hate to be a downer but a lot of people in the 2017-2018 USC Transfer thread talk about getting denied with 4.0 GPAs in college. Were you not a part of Greek Life at Miami? I figured you would have expected that it was very Greek-life oriented.
@joeyfreshwater I am not part of Greek life, it’s relatively big (like 15%…?) but didn’t hear that it was a necessity to be a part of, but it seemed to be overwhelming af at least in my first sem. In any case, my reasons are probably more academic than anything else (aside from pre-med I intend to do IR as my major for possible entrance into politics later in life so a good program is paramount for me). Isn’t USC supposed to be transfer friendly though?
Yes, it’s very transfer friendly, but they get lots of applicants so it’s super competitive. They heavily favor legacy students too. If I were you, make sure you have a bunch of good extracurriculars, because lots of students with good grades get denied as transfers.
USC is very transfer friendly and accepts around 30% of transfers in any given year. However, as has been mentioned, a lot of well-qualified students still get rejected. The first time I applied, I had a 4.0 and received a spring grade request. I was taking a ton of units and overloaded on units during the spring semester (21 units), so it made sense that they would want to see how my semester played out. I had applied as Undecided/Dornsife as my first choice major. My spring grade request was super specific too - my admission counselor only wanted to see my grade in a math course that I was taking. I ended up getting all A’s and one B. The B was in math and about two weeks after sending in my spring grades, I was rejected. Overall, it seems like I was rejected for getting just one B. To make things worse, I didn’t get into any of the other colleges I applied to. I didn’t pick enough safety schools.
I admire the whole USC or bust mentality that a lot of people seem to have, but there’s simply no thing as a 100% chance. All that being said, you have excellent odds if you keep up the GPA; it’s solid. Knocking out GE courses and major prep (if applicable) round things out. Good luck on the transfer. Just make sure to have backups if you truly are unhappy at UMiami and wish to transfer out. I also had difficultly maintaining a full-time schedule at first. My uncle passed away literally the weekend before my spring semester started, so it was tough to solider on. If anything, your lack of consistent full-time attendance just makes your odds of getting a spring grade request very high.
@zettasyntax thank you so much for your reply! I really appreciate it. I’m not in a USC or bust mentality but like theyre IR program. I will consider other schools too. Would you say that theres more leeway on GPA if I’m taking many STEM courses? Lowkey worried about Gen Chem next year ahahahahah! I will try my best to keep the GPA up though
@zettasyntax ayee well stats isn’t THAT easy haha I guess it’s all school/professor dependent. Do they also consider the rigor of the school transferring from? I’m not saying UMiami is some top 20 school but we’re top 50 and a good school so does that help as well?/
Yeah, I’ve found that not a lot of professors like giving out extra credit. I’m so lucky my stats professor wasn’t one of them or else I would have likely gotten a C+ in the course.
I’ve always thought the school helps, but recently, I’m iffy about this. I was chatting with a guy from UCB for awhile and he was trying to transfer to USC. His grades were really decent, but he was below the 3.7 transfer average. I want to say he had a 3.5? He was rejected. I felt pretty awful. I thought USC would take into account that he was transferring from a tough institution. So I’d say if the school does play any factor, it’s probably small.
@zettasyntax Darn that rejection for that Berkeley kid is surprising, especially given that people with his GPA get into USC as well from lesser institutions. Perhaps there were other elements from his application that were missing. Anyway, thank you so much, I’m going to try super hard to maintain my GPA haha!
I do beleive that the academic counselors take into account course rigor. For instance, the math class that I got a B in was statistics. Maybe my counselor’s thought process was like “Oh, he couldn’t even manage an A in stats. It’s not like it was calc” 
I was also taking two programming courses, so I thought my schedule had some demanding courses and wasn’t all fluff. There’s definitely been people that get A’s in difficult STEM courses and still get rejected. So yeah, it’s best to just keep that GPA as high as possible and hope for the best