<p>Well throughout the web I have looked for transfer admissions advice. A month or a few weeks ago, news came from the colleges that I applied to as a transfer that I had been accepted. I didn't do so hot in high school, graduated as a B student, maintained a 4.0 in my first three semesters of college at a lower level university honors program. Retook the SAT after my first year of college and managed to make a competitive score on it.</p>
<p>During my first year of college I kept busy, I volunteered, I participated in some school clubs and even managed to become the vice president of one. I was pro active, I managed to do a lot, a lot more than I did in high school.</p>
<p>Throughout the transfer process I realized one thing though, I was late in finding this site but not only that, I was not able to find much advice on transfer admissions at all. They have tons of books dedicated to college admissions and tons of websites dedicated to giving advice on it. Yet there is nothing out there for transfer students or students looking to transfer to a top university.</p>
<p>Like, most people who work in college admissions act as if college transfers don't even exist, any reason?</p>
<p>**I managed to make into several tier 1 schools and two Ivies as a transfer, was rejected from some other schools.</p>
<p>I am also saying this because I fought through the transfer admissions process along with my college counselor, that is it. Other than that, I had some tips from recent students in my old university that managed to transfer to top universities. </p>
<p>Due to their help I was able to get together a good list and I had to spend endless hours doing essays and getting my recommendation letters in. I am now at a 4 year tier 1 university (well renowned), made it in as a junior transfer but I realize now how much of a lack of help there is for transfer students.</p>
<p>Most college admissions books at bookstores and most college admission sites completely neglect the possibility of transferring to a top university when I have seen on many occasions, it has been a reality.</p>
<p>I already put the effort in but I had a curiosity. I thought what I did was sort of rare but looks like there will be others like me at the school I am.</p>
<p>Speaking of: When students with average high school records and good college records do get into the top schools as transfers, are they able to compete with the students at the top schools (academically speaking)?</p>
<p>Honestly, I think Andale’s thread is as good or better than what you’d find in books, which mention transferring peripherally at best; though I haven’t done THAT much sleuthing for published information on transferring. </p>
<p>My sense is that it’s just not lucrative enough to write/publish an entire book on transfers because the pool is so small compared to that of freshman applicants, not to mention that, aside from a few, though admittedly important nuances, the process is not terribly different from that of freshman applications: write solid, sincere essays; get strong recommendations; have high test scores; take challenging courses and do well in them; etc.</p>
<p>BTW - congrats on your success as a transfer! IMHO, it’s a less knowable/predictable process than freshman admissions and there’s a lot of luck involved what with yields/waitlist activity from the freshman cycle being so decisive in whether or not there’s more/less space for transfers.</p>
<p>I think that even though there should not be a website or book dedicated to transfer admissions, there should be efforts to at least dedicate a section to it. </p>
<p>The thing that I always thought about was this, I heard that top schools only admit transfer who would have made it in as freshman applicants. How often is this the case? Like would they admit someone with a great college record who would not have made it in as a freshman applicant?</p>
<p>I managed to make it in to two Ivies but I came from a very bizarre situation.</p>
<p>That’s the case when applying for sophomore standing (less than 60 semester hours) because HS stats still play significant parts. When applying for junior standing, however, schools place more emphasis on college stats when making decisions, thus a B-student in HS will have better chances provided that he is an A-student in college.</p>
<p>I made it into Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn as a junior transfer and Cornell as a frosh (didn’t apply to Dartmouth or Penn out of high school). I would almost certainly not have been admitted to Penn or Dartmouth given that my high school courseload was relatively light. Ergo, the statement that schools will not admit you if you would not have been competitive as a freshman can be taken with a few grains of salt.</p>
<p>I doubt that’s true. I applied to three schools, all of which were reaches for me senior year of high school. I got into all three, including two who rejected me last year. Maybe transfer admissions are more random, but I know I would loved a book to help me out during this process.</p>
<p>Junior standing, okay I get it. Also, I transferred to a well renowned university from a not so renowned school (though I was in the honors program). I heard that usually the tier 1 schools take in state transfers from community colleges or take them from other top schools which really made me nervous and made me worry.</p>
<p>Basically the questions that need to be answered are these.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Can a bad or average high school record ruin a great college record despite applying for junior standing? (already answered).</p></li>
<li><p>Do the top schools only take from other top schools? (in my case it was a no).</p></li>
<li><p>Should you retake the SATs?</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>I think it would depend on how bad and if there were discipline problems as well as bad grades. Generally, the high school transcript in this case wouldn’t carry exceptional weight.</p></li>
<li><p>No. They tend to favor applicants from similar schools (i.e., four-year private schools) simply because their academic rigor/environment is more comparable and they can judge and articulate transcripts more easily; however, there are literally hundreds of cases of brilliant students who attend bottom feeder schools (e.g., CCs, fourth-tier commuter schools) or large state schools before transferring up. It’ll certainly help transferring from a good school, but it will also beg the question of whether you’re trying to “transfer up” or do in fact have a legitimate reason.</p></li>
<li><p>Not sure. It depends where you want to go and how low they were. Is there a consensus on this?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>can’t hurt to retake the SAT’s again, and from what I understand if your shooting for a teir 1 school as long as your gpa in high school was in the b range, and your applying for junior transfer it can’t have that much of a significant negative effect on your application.</p>
<p>I have always found wayward trojan’s post to be excellent advice, I would follow it</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, MIT, Columbia, Stanford, are all colleges that accept a very small number of transfers. The transfers that do get in there, do they come from other top schools or do some come from community colleges and tier 4, tier 3 and tier 2 schools?</p>
<p>There are some that come from tier 3 & 4 & community colleges. However, those are people who wrote extroadinary life-changing essays and scored better on SATs.</p>
<p>There have been other posters in your shoes. One was transfering from a Tier 4 school in Georgia. Folks told this poster the same thing I’m going to tell you…your likelihood of getting accepted to multiple Ivy League schools as a transfer is a goose egg.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which two…Cornell and Columbia?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Why does this matter to you IF you have already been accepted at two Ivies?</p>
<p>I really don’t know what OP is trying to get out of this thread, but let me tell you guys something that I know from my experience.</p>
<p>First of all, if students were B student at high school, then it is very unlikely for those applicants to get accepted to Ivys, Top3 LACs, U chicago Duke etc. Students who get accpeted to those schools and come from community college either have
A) good hs records that could’ve got them in when they were applying as freshmen (if they are sophomore acceptees)
B) they are junior transfers</p>
<p>However, B-average high schools students who are doing sophomore transfer frequently get accepted to sschools like emory, vanderbilt, and even washu, if they have good gpa, rec, ec, essay etc. </p>
<p>Most of students who did bad in high school transfer to top institutions I mentioned above thorugh junior transfer cycle. Most of the people coming from community college enter only as Junior transfer unless they had good records in high school. It is already well known that admission officers usually do not consider hs records and sat for junior transfers.</p>
<p>And from my experience, most of the transfer students to top institutions from other top institutions do very well (I mean, they had to have around 3.9 gpa from top institutions to be accepted to other institutions)
However, most of the transfer students from CC, especially junior transfers, are in the middle range. Some people do make top15% in transfer institution, but most of them struggle with new environment, new workload etc.</p>
<p>and top instiutions (stanford amherst harvard swarthmore columbia duke etc etc etc) accept lots of CC students. They really encourage CC students to apply their colleges. You can check this fact on their transfer admission website.</p>
<p>But who they accept is very different, at least over the past several years, few CC students have been accepted. S does seem to have a policy of accepting a larger number of CC and non-traditional students. However, to say that colleges like S, A & H accept “lots of CC students” is stretching it quite a bit since they don’t accept “lots” of any kind of transfer student.</p>