What else can be done to improve my chances at a transfer?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
1

<p>This isn’t necessarily a chance me thread. I would really like advice on my situation. Is there anything that can be done at this point to increase my chances of admission? I got the opportunity to take a tour of the campus today and absolutely fell in love with the school. I love the environment, the open-curriculum, the area surrounding the city. I love everything about it. I’ve decided that this is the only school I’m going to apply for transfer because it is such a perfect fit for me, and I can spend as much time on the application as possible. With that said, am I just dreaming? Is it impossible? Is there anything I can do?</p>

<p>Here are my stats:
High school GPA/rank- like 3.3 unweighted, rank like top 20% or something not very good
SAT - 1900 (580 math, 690 crit., 630 writing) from three years ago. I’m going to retake this in October and am confident I can score at least a 2150 (I’ve been studying a lot). Please evaluate me with that score in mind.</p>

<p>Current college: UC Riverside
GPA (after first year) - 3.94
Major: Computer Science</p>

<p>Extra-curriculars: My main extra-curricular is my band. I’m the leader of the band and we’re pretty well known in the area, so my tasks include composing music, producing music, promoting music, and also managing. This is a full-time deal. I also tutor calculus </p>

<p>Letters of rec: My first letter of recommendation is from my computer science teacher. It should be wonderful, because he told me to my face that I was one of the best students he’s had in ten years. He’s awesome and that was very flattering! My second should be pretty good as well, though probably not quite as glowing because I didn’t know that teacher as well.</p>

<p>Essay: I know a lot about the school, and believe I can write a good essay that seriously explains why Brown is the right school for me. The main reasons include that my current school’s requirements restricts me from studying other main passions, like theater and music, and that my current school doesn’t give me the freedom to start clubs that Brown does (I have a club I would like to start).</p>

<p>Hook?: I’ve encountered some serious hardships at the end of high school, and this period in fact marked my turn around in attitude and my search for a better school. Basically, my parent was paralyzed and lost his job, and my family has become poor as a result. I believe that despite the trauma of the situation, my response to it in trying to better myself and make the most of my time would look good as a character trait. It’s a bad situation, and I’m not going to include unless a question on the supplement seems to call for it (like: “What’s a challenge you’ve faced and how have you overcome it?” for example). The last thing I want to do is draw pity from the admissions office, and I would be using this example solely because I think it’s an important part of how I’ve developed and matured.</p>

<p>I’m also asking for financial aid, which I know hurts my odds. What kind of odds am I up against? What can I do to improve them? For example, what might be a good way to structure my application? Thanks a lot ahead of time, I know threads like this can be annoying, but I’m sure you know what it’s like to stress about admissions haha</p>

<p>p.s- I made a similar thread last year when I was applying asking for my chances. Last year my statistics and reasons for applying were very different however, so the whole package is pretty different.</p>

2

<p>“am I just dreaming”
At this point, yes. For 2 reasons
1]Brown heavily factors in your HS transcript into transfer decisions. It is one of the most selective colleges for incoming freshman, and based on your GPA, and SAT’s it would have been highly unlikely for you to have been accepted last year. You need to look at the Common Data Set to see what the statistics were for accepted Freshman.
<a href=“Office of Institutional Research | Brown University”>Office of Institutional Research | Brown University;
2] Brown accepts very few transfer students because, unlike the UC’s, they only have openings if students decide to leave Brown[ and very few do]. The acceptance rate for transfer applicants to most Ivy’s is often less than half the rate for Freshman acceptances. And colleges really don’t care about EC’s when considering transfer applications.
Realistically, You need to find some other colleges if you want to transfer out of where you are now. Sorry for the tough love, but there aren’t a lot other colleges[ like USC for instance?] who accept many transfer students and also offer lots of FA for transfer students.</p>

3

<p>On what grounds are you making your first assumption? I’ve never heard of a school that weighs high schools grades so highly for junior transfer applicants. I’m going to have a year and a half of college under my belt at the time I apply, and have gotten almost straight A’s and A+'s. Not to sound defensive, but I’m going to have to disagree with your first assumption that my high school grades are going to throw me out of the running entirely, unless you have some evidence to back up your claim that high school grades are weighted that highly for junior transfers.</p>

<p>I’m retaking my SAT’s and am confident I can score at least at Brown’s average. With score choice, I wouldn’t have to send my bad 1900 score. </p>

<p>Their transfer acceptance rate has hovered just below or at 10% for the last few years, not too much worse than the freshman acceptance rate.</p>

4

<p>1]take a look at what documentation is required for transfer students. It’s on the common data set. If they did not care about your HS record they would not REQUIRE it.
2]Take a look at how long I have been on CC. I have read hundreds of posts from transfer students, assuming or hoping that their HS transcript will NOT be a factor in transfer decisions, but colleges like Brown do take them under consideration. You can read through transfer results threads, as I have, and you will see that time and time again, the students who are accepted at the most selective colleges are those whose stats would have put them in the running during their HS. It does you no good to fall in love with a college where at best you have a 90% chance of rejection. If you are really interested in transferring there are many other great colleges where you would have a reasonable chance of acceptance.</p>

5

<p>Not to spread false hope or misinformation, but I was accepted this last spring as a transfer and I was a pretty lousy high school student (I think I had a 3.3?). I visited the school my junior year in high school, loved it, figured I had no chance and didn’t even bother applying until I transferred out of the college I ended up going to. That said, I consider myself veeeery lucky and would highly suggest you at least add a few other colleges to your list…unless of course Brown is the only place that you’d want to go to more than UCR, in which case I guess you’re fine.</p>

6

<p>Well, it’s not misinformation unless you’re actually lying haha. Congratulations on your acceptance! I’m not really happy at UCR, so I think I’m going to apply to four other UC schools as well as Brown. I don’t really want to apply to other privates, because I’ve got a tough schedule next year and applications can be time consuming. So did you have anything absolutely outstanding on your record that you think got you in? Were you asking for financial aid?</p>

7

<p>The only thing that would be outstanding would be my collegiate academic performance. I had a good idea of what I wanted to study before I even got to college, so when I arrived I immediately took as many advanced courses in my major as possible. I did really well in my classes and consequently got what I imagine were very good recommendations. I think that, looking at my transcript, where they could see that at least two of my courses every semester were in my major, I may have appeared to be a good candidate for a school that encourages constructing your own course of study. I can’t think of anything that ‘got me in’, though–I had virtually no ECs, am not minority and have no harrowing tales of loss/charity/spiritual ascendancy to share : ) I didn’t ask for financial aide, which probably helped. </p>

<p>Ahaha, in the end my choice came down to a UC and Brown (Cal, specifically). I think the worst week of my life was spent weighing one against the other.</p>

8

<p>Wow, well that’s awesome and encouraging (minus the not asking for financial aid thing, which isn’t encouraging at all haha) story! Ideally, I’ll be making that same decision between Cal and Brown. But I’d choose Brown in a heart-beat. I’ve been to Brown, and I know a bunch of people that go to Berkeley, and based on all the info I’ve gathered I feel like Brown is a much much better place to do your undergrad. I’m speaking more on social life and getting the most out of an education though, not necessarily the best ranked departments (which Berkeley might have an edge in).</p>

9

<p>“Brown heavily factors in your HS transcript into transfer decisions.”
Maybe so. I was a top, dedicated student with lots of leadership, extracurricular activities while at secondary school. But jabberwocky66’s case contradicts, and also my SAT scores… well, it’s unspeakable. Let’s not go into that here! At least my HS GPA was almost perfect with excellent recommendation letters from both HS and college teachers. I was really impressed that Brown actually considers students with such low SAT scores like myself unlike Stanford, although I ended up going to Columbia in the end. I did not apply for FA either. Not to sound optimistic, but my sense is that you will be accepted if you choose not to ask for FA.</p>

10

<p>Well, it’s really out of the question to not ask for financial aid. My family’s net income is under 50,000 and the cost of Brown is way too much.</p>

11

<p>No, no. I only assumed that not asking for financial aid helped me, given my low SAT scores. YMMV. I recall someone (CherryBlossom or something) from UC (could be San Diego) with college GPA similar to yours last year got accepted into Brown, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Cornell, Penn, etc. He/she had probably applied for FA. Regardless, I think you have a very good shot with the expected SAT result and good reasons why you want to attend Brown. I knew nothing about the school when I wrote my essays!</p>

12

<p>So I just retook my SAT’s and got a 2260! I scored better in every section than I did when I took it in high school (1900). With that said, would it be a good idea to send both scores? I feel like that marked improvement is now shown in both my SAT scores and my grades, so maybe it would be a good idea to send both SAT scores for that reason. What do you guys think?</p>

13

<p>Just send the most recent scores.</p>

<p>and congrats for doing so well!</p>