Advice on transferring?

alecbenzer
Wed, 12 Oct 2011 21:48:52 +0000

This might be an unrealistic expectation at any medium or large university, which will have people with a range of intellectual interests and abilities. And a small school would have to be an exact fit to your intellectual interests and abilities to meet this expectation. At a large university, you should at least be able to find like minded people among the large population of other students.

It may be the case that it was a mistake for me to come to a large state university, especially if part of my issue is lack of diversity, but regardless of how big any university is, there are still norms for intelligence and attitude toward academics and things like that, and I feel like an outlier in that sense. I’m not asking to be with people who are exactly like me. That was far from the case in high school. But it was closer to fit - I could relate to more people, just in general (there were more people whose interests aligned pretty closely with mine and even the people who were the most different were relatively relatable, or at least they were people whose company I could more readily enjoy). I don’t see why it would be surprising for this to be the case at a school where people share geography more than anything else, whereas I imagine at other schools people are there because they share something more relevant.



Remember that, in real life, you will be interacting with people of all different intellectual interests and abilities.

I guess so, but college would seem to be one of the few times where I could get the chance to interact with intellectually similar people in a large way. I also wouldn’t be paying to be around people in real life, but here I sort of am (especially since I’m not in a major city or anything like that).



As far as transferring goes, it is your decision. But evaluate schools realistically; don’t oversell yourself on how much better some other school will be, since you may be setting yourself up for a letdown after you transfer.

I guess what I’m looking for is whether or not I should settle for having a meh impression of my college, or if its important that I go somewhere where I feel right. Right now I just have trouble justifying the cost here, and I don’t know if it’s worth just settling here, or if I should push to find somewhere I feel I fits better.