After a disappointing series of rejections, I have decided that I will attempt to re-apply to some of the schools I applied to earlier this year. I have decided to attend Wells College (most likely) which is a small liberal arts college in Aurora, NY as it is my cheapest option. While not an awful school, I have ambitious graduate school goals. I know that many people who received acceptance letters from top 20 colleges happened to go to other top-ranked schools for their undergraduate years.
With that said, I have compiled a list of colleges that I wish to transfer to;
Difficult:
Cornell University (20.59%)
NYU (24.02%)
Vanderbilt (26.14%)
UC Berkeley (24.0%)
UCLA (25.0%)
Fallback:
Binghamton University (48.0%)
Reach:
Stanford (1.98%)
UChicago (2.22%)
Columbia (6.22%)
Yale (2.68%)
What should I do for a year or two at my first college to improve my odds of acceptance? (Other than recieve amazing grades, have stellar recs, and have solid EC’s)
I plan to double major in Economics and Philosophy with a minor in either History or Political Science
Just a heads up. Cornell’s transfer rate is inflated from all the guaranteed transfer acceptances. I’ve talked to admissions officers as I know some and some programs/majors have a 0% transfer acceptance rate because some programs are small and if no one leaves no one new comes in. ILR is the pre-law school and most of their transfers are from guaranteed transfers.
Also, from your previous threads, your SAT/ACT scores and GPA are ridiculously low for any of those schools so i’d honestly start thinking of different places that is good for pre-law.
It looks like you have reaches, super reaches, and then one low match.
How do you plan on paying for some of these schools if you do get in? NYU has little to no financial aid for transfers. The UCs won’t give you anything.
Are those the acceptance rate for junior transfers or transfers in general? Schools may have less spots for juniors than they have for sophomores.
You need to do more research before it becomes time to apply than just 9 top schools and binghamton.
“What should I do for a year or two at my first college to improve my odds of acceptance? (Other than recieve amazing grades, have stellar recs, and have solid EC’s)” Yup that’s exactly what you need to do. Easier said than done.
Hi! I’m a high school senior like you and am probably going to Binghamton! I have a similar plan to work really hard freshman year and possibly transfer into sophomore year at a reach school. Perhaps you should be prepared or even expect rejections from all 9 reaches. Sure, we’re in the same boat; I also experienced a long chain of rejections from my reach schools, and I wouldn’t expect the results to be any different for transfers. Of course I think you should try, but definitely apply to a few more targets (as I like to call matches) unless you’re completely okay with either 1) probably going to Binghamton or 2) staying at Wells College for the rest of your undergrad.