I just finished my Freshman year at Rutgers with a 3.563 GPA. I made the Mock Trial A-Team as a Freshman, am Vice President of two clubs there, and had been hired to staff 3 political campaigns, all before I had turned 19. I am not doing this to brag, just to give you all an accurate gauge of who I am so that your advice can be given with the correct information. Please be candid in your responses, which I know I don’t have to say on CC haha.
With that, I am a Political Science/Pre-law major with minors in Creative writing and Philosophy. My SAT’s were right around 2000, and I did not have the best high school GPA, just some great extracurriculars and a decent resume (pardon the myriad grammatical mistakes, I am typing this in a rush).
My recommendation letter(s) would be pretty damn good, or at least from some damn good people, so I have no qualms regarding those. Should I nail two 4.0s with the credits I intend to take next year, I will have a 3.816 GPA.
Truthfully, I want to transfer not only because I would like a different school, but also because it would give me some validation. Rutgers is nice, but I would like to apply to another school.
My top schools are Georgetown, Cornell, Harvard, NYU, and UCLA; do you think these are realistic, given my situation currently, and my projected one? If so, or if not, what other schools would you guys recommend?
I appreciate the time and consideration of all of you who choose to help out. Thanks.
With a 3.8 and your current ECs I think you’d have a shot at UCLA because they have a 30% acceptance rate for letters and science. NYU’s transfer acceptance rate is 24% overall so it’s still doable but I don’t know if political science is harder than their overall rate.
However, Cornell, G-Town, and Harvard are all basically a lottery.
To add to @philbegas , remember that as an out of state student, you should not apply to any UC’s (UCLA, Berkeley, etc.)
The reason why is because while transfer rate is 30% for UCLA transfers, about ~95% of the students accepted to UCLA are students from California Community College.
Perhaps look at private California institutions (USC is great).
Take a look at Tufts. Maybe George Washington University?
This is assuming you boost your GPA to a ~3.8.
OOS to UCLA is a lottery too due to the dearthof oos places AND you wouldn’t qualify for any aid.
What is your budget?
Why not apply to Princeton? They’ll start admitting transfers next year (although you’re not quite who they’re targeting )
Most of all, you want colleges that are strong in writing and philosophy, so you should include Amherst, Hamilton, Reed, Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Brandeis, Carleton, Colby, Haverford, Davidson, Pomona, Oberlin, Wesleyan, Vassar.
I would not assume two semesters of 4.0 will be easy to achieve. Lots of people like to plan ahead that way, but past performance is the best predictor of future performance, and I suspect few of them manage it.
For your academic and career interests – government and public policy studies, pre-law, philosophy and, most notably, creative writing and writing in general – Hamilton would be tough to beat. That said, I’d concur with most of the suggestions by @MYOS1634, and would include Kenyon with that group.
@MYOS1634, I had not heard that Princeton would be taking transfers. Who do you think they’re are targeting?
@MYOS1634, never mind. Google helped me out.
@bodangles Totally agree. In order to reach a 4.0 with a similar course load, you’d have to totally change your study habits and time management.
While I always give the benefit of the doubt to every poster regarding these types of subjects, realistically @BernieBro24 , you should for now see what options you have with your current GPA. Once you actually perform, and ready to apply, then you look at what doors may have opened (or closed) for you.
I have worked with a couple of people from Rutgers and they were both top-notch. I am pretty sure that when I was a graduate student at a very top university there were a few very strong students in the same program who had done undergrad at Rutgers (most of whom had subsequently gotten jobs at Bell Labs, back when Bell Labs was a big deal).
To me it sounds like you are doing very well at Rutgers. Given your major I think that you might want to keep your grades up as much as you can for the purpose of getting into a top graduate (or law) school, but it is not at all clear to me why you would want to transfer. Certainly I think that you would need to have a very good reason for this to make sense.
You guys really need to take into account the school the OP is transferring from. Georgetown, Cornell, Harvard, and UCLA is near impossible for you to transfer into to be honest. Actually Harvard is impossibe. The others are near-impossible. If you really staffed 3 political campaigns, you wouldn’t have ended up at a place like Rutgers at the start. Getting a 4.0 there is different than getting a 4.0 at a place like MIT. Transferring into a school like NYU sounds more reasonable.
I appreciate all your comments thus far, and I am sincerely taking them into consideration. @ThrillCosby my first campaign was that of Bernie Sanders in the Summer of 2016; I was already committed to college. I had only applied to 4 schools: Georgetown, NYU, Princeton, and Rutgers, with an intention to transfer out of Rutgers should that have been my forced hand; it was, as the other three did not accept me. But the skepticism was understandable, I hope this clears it up. Thank you all for your advice, and I look forward to coming back to see more. Wish me luck! I wish you all luck with your endeavors as well 
@MYOS1634 Haha Princeton has been my dream school since I was a kid. My interview was perfect, everything was great, and at the end of it all someone else from my school got in. I’d love to reapply, we’ll see
@DadTwoGirls I appreciate the candor, and my dad worked at Bellcore! It is not only for validation, but for networking opportunities, and an experience outside of the same area that I have lived in my whole life. Mainly for validation and purposes around that premise, to be completely honest.
I must take a look at Hamilton; to be honest, I had not considered liberal arts colleges.
Rutgers has a top end reputation in philosophy.
It seems pretty shallow to transfer mainly for a prestige upgrade or to get out of NJ when you really should be concentrating on your GPA, logical thinking skills, and saving money if you want to go to law school.
@ucbalumnus I don’t fully know if I want law school; I am working on figuring out what I really want to do with my life this year. I only applied to 4 schools because I figured my worst case was to discover myself at Rutgers and then transfer
What’s wrong with staying at Rutgers and graduating from there (assuming that you are a NJ resident who gets in-state tuition)?
Here are some pages on pre-law topics and law school admission selectivity:
http://lawschoolnumbers.com/application-prep/ugraduate
http://schools.lawschoolnumbers.com/
Law employment is very law-school-prestige-conscious, even though law school admission is much more GPA and LSAT based (rather than undergraduate school based):
https://www.lstreports.com/national/
Reed, Wesleyan, Hamilton, Colgate, Oberlin, Kenyon, Denison, Vassar, UChic, WashU are all options.
Occidental has a campaign semester BTW.
Right up your alley.
It’s true Rutgers’ reputation is hard to beat for philosophy and a high GPA would open many doors.