Why is CMC like this?

Why do CMC (and other colleges) have such a low threshold for who counts as a transfer applicant?

Transfer applicants:
“ Any student who has enrolled in a U.S. or international college or university after high school graduation completion is considered a transfer applicant, regardless of courses taken or credits completed.” - CMC website

I am on a gap year, and I am enrolled at a university but I’m only part-time and doing distance learning (taking two courses). Many other schools don’t seem to care (the threshold is completing one full-time semester or year). Like perhaps applying as a transfer wouldn’t be the worst… but it kinda seems less realistic/worthwhile.

Call their admissions office and explain your situation. See what they say. We can’t read their minds. There are other colleges to apply to if you can’t transfer there.

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That is a very common transfer policy, especially among private schools. LACs like CMC are typically 4 year residential colleges with a relatively small student body. There are often only transfer spaces if another student leaves.

Lastly this isn’t an issue at CMC because they meet full need, but many schools give less merit and need based aid to transfers (however they define them) as well.

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Called them today, and it went about as expected. Looks like I will be applying as a transfer with a grand total of two college-level courses in my record. Just for fun, because the courses were delivered through distance learning, I can’t even apply to transfer any credit.

Oh well.

There are plenty of other LACs that don’t have such a restrictive policy for who is a first-year, so I think it’s time to move on and focus on other schools. I emailed the AO at CMC with further questions about transfers, but I don’t think I’ll be coming back to my CMC application until I’ve gotten the others out of the way.