What is the chance to transfer from U of Chicago to Harvard after first year? Accept rate and GPA?
4.0, involved in ECs, strong reason to transfer and you’ll have a shot
Acceptance rate for transfers is 1%.
and it’s not a “strong reason to transfer” that you need: per Harvard it is “A clearly defined academic need to transfer”. Coming from UChicago that will not be easy to find.
Agree with @collegemom3717 Harvard accepts something like 12 transfers a year with a 1% admissions rate. You would need a compelling academic reason to transfer, which will be hard to justify coming from Chicago.
Can you come up with a compelling personal reason for a geographic move?
Geography won’t do it for Harvard. If the OP absolutely had to be in Boston, there is no shortage of university options in the area.
No saying it will be dispositive. But it is an additional helpful argument.
It could if say you wanted to be near a dying relative. A bit morbid, I know.
I expect that a significant number of transfers are athletes.
significant other, wife etc also adds something. change of family circumstances.
@Chrchill, do you have experience of this (for Harvard), or is this hypothetical?
Who knows if Harvard will even be accepting transfers this year, given its significant freshman overenrollment? It can’t possibly have room for many. The house system is going to be stressed for years because of this, but next year most of all.
Over the past couple of decades, I think most Harvard transfers have come from one of four categories of applicant (and sometimes more than one of the categories): athletic recruits, people whom Harvard accepted out of high school but chose to go elsewhere, people who are at some sort of very different type of college that turns out not to be for them (one of the military academies, usually, or a women’s college as with Hanna), and people coming out of Deep Springs.
If you legitimately fall into one of those categories, your chances are way better than average. Which means, of course, that if you don’t fall into one of those categories, your chances are significantly worse than average. And average is 1%.
I am almost sure you have no valid reason to transfer from UChicago to Harvard. Academically, they are both top-tier institutions and it will be hard to find a reason, if any, to transfer.
@Bellstone it is extremely hard to transfer from less prestigious top 10/15 schools into H (YPS) , because there is no practical reason to do so, it is invariably due to prestige-chasing. Adcoms are not going to give a spot to people who want to transfer for prestige reasons. The few spots available are mostly for very bright people at state schools, LACs, or non elite privates, military academies, previous admits who turned down Harvard and athletes .
The only cases I have personally heard of transferring from another elite to HYPS are people with crazy crazy connections. I know a Penn guy who transferred to Harvard and a Columbia guy who transferred to Yale but they were both insanely well-connected.
Only successful top 15 to Y or H transfers I’ve personally seen have been transfers out of MIT who’ve rejected the dark side, felt the force, and made persuasive cases for liberal arts majors…
Son has a friend who successfully transferred from UChicago to Harvard about 3 years ago.
I’m aware of one transfer from a high-ranking non-Ivy to H, which happened after a close relative was admitted regular-way (what that may have had to do with it, I have no idea, but I don’t think the kid was otherwise a legacy).