babygoindown

Hello everyone,
I'm a freshman at UCLA majoring in applied math. I thinking about transferring to some more prestigious and relatively smaller school with the same major or economics after my freshman year. My targets are most heavily focused on Northwestern and UChicago although I'll apply to some other schools too.

I think I have good high school records: 4.0 gpa unweighted, 1450 SAT(reading + math), and have taken 11 APs, national AP scholar, concertmaster in high school orchestra.

What I really want to know is what are the most important criteria for a successful sophomore transfer (i mean those that i can change in my freshman year at UCLA)?? Is it freshman GPA? or ECs (i'm a little worried if it's ECs cuz it's hard to be a leader in any clubs as a freshman)??

If I get 4.0 or at least a 3.8 at UCLA (I don't think I'll have an extremely intense schedule but will have a decent course load), and join our symphony orchestra(the 8th year I've been in an orchestra), with good essays and fairly decent recs(i'm assuming only a decent rec because it is hard to access professors at a school like UCLA, but I'll try my best), what are my odds of successfully transferring??

PS: I was waitlisted by Northwestern when I applied for freshman application. On the "waitlist closed" letter they sent me, NU explicitly said that waitlisted students who applied as transfers in the past experienced higher than average acceptance rate. With a >3.8 GPA at UCLA and my stats from high school shown above, do I at least stand a good chance for NU??? WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO TO IMPROVE MY CHANCES??

Thank you guys sooooo much@!!!!!!!

sometransfer

As you can read in some of the other threads, there is nothing you can do now to improve your chances, other than get high grades in college. Come back after your final grades are in.

babygoindown

so u mean freshman gpa in college is the single most important thing for sophomore transfer??

ksyar2001

Freshman at UCLA thinking about transferring to Northwestern?
Wow. I'm in the exact same boat.
I'm also a freshman at UCLA and I'm originally from Wisconsin, so I'd like to move back to Midwest.
I'm also an international student, so attending a private school would definitely help me on the financial side.

babygoindown

thats incredible! u wanna leave each others contact information just so that we can help each other when necessary?? my email in chentn2009@************. email me

ksyar2001

Wait I don't know why your email is censored but is it ucla email?

babygoindown

lolllll it is h o t m a i l

ksyar2001

I just sent you an email. I hope you got it.

min9309

Hi. I'm really surprised that there are so many students who want to transfer from UCLA. And I'm also a Freshman in UCLA, international student and major in pre-IDS (international development studies). I really want to transfer to Wellesley or Barnard (woman's college related to Columbia!) and I'm glad that someone has same worry with me.

I absolutely agree the things you said. Yeah..there are toooooooo many students in UCLA and I really don't have any idea how to become close with my professors or TAs. Well, I'm even not sure that they can remember me if I bother them every office hour...and also, we don't have much time to go their office or do some kind of EC.. Except winter break, the school gives only about 3-4 months before the application deadline.

And I don't think these are 'advice' but in my case, now I'm doing some volunteer translating. I can do that with my laptop. Well, I think that cannot show the administration officers my leadership or something cooperation ability like club, but i still think that's much better than do nothing in Freshman years.(and I also believe that foreign language experience can be helpful to my major, haha) So How about find something you can do with internet..? or join um...a club that have social activities(?) like campaign.

Also I enrolled the classes after research. I found the name of the professors in Bruinwalk website and check their 'concern' and 'easy' rates. I took the classes of professors who got about 8/10 in both of their 'concern' and 'easy'. So I think it can be another good way if you think now your professor is too harsh or something. Of course, unfortunately I couldn't know about my TAs and now they are horribly boring and even seem harsh..orz. However, now my professors teach really interesting and assignments are...well, manageable.

At last, I heard that those optional-high school teachers' recommendations can be helpful sometimes.


Let's bother professors for better GPA and recommendations! Good Luck XD!!!


*P.S. Do you think taking SAT again in winter is better if I have not that high score..? my score is about 600/800/700 but I'm worried about my CR...

**Another P.S. If you have an interest in fiat-lux seminar, I think that is pretty good way to meet professor. Now I take history 19 seminar, and there are only 12 students! I'm trying to ask professor a lot... Actually, he is my target professor for recommendation lol

babygoindown

wow thx for posting such a long reply to share ur experience! I'm really jealous how u r already on the right track, and I'll try to get moving as well.
About the SAT, my college counselor in my high school had a personal meeting with the admission dean at Northwestern, and I asked my counselor if he could be so kind to raise the question "is a 100 points increase in SAT going to significantly increase my chance of transferring to NU??" to the NU admission dean, and the answer is no or little effect. After all, SAT measures how well a high school student prepares for college, not how well a college freshman prepares for his sophomore year. Moreover, said my counselor who was restating what the NU admission dean said, since UCLA is still a great school, the performance at UCLA might be the main focus of our transfer application. So I guess the freshman GPA is pretty important? and I really don't think the admissions are expecting us to have a significant amount of leadership as a freshman because that's simply not practical. I think as long as that you show u r involved in college then u r fine

Good luck to all of us!!

entomom

Closing thread due to word filter violations.