Advice Please: Should I transfer colleges now or not? Apologies for length of post.

College Life
1

To start off, I am a current sophomore in college. I graduated high school in 2013, and then took a gap year before beginning online classes at my first college. The reason for my gap year was a mixture between family problems, mental health issues, and really needing to take time for myself. At my first college, I maintained a GPA of 4.0 while earning 21 credits total. Then, I transferred to my second college where I have a 4.0 GPA and currently have earned 6 credits & am working on 12 more currently. So I will have (hopefully) 39 credit hours total by the end of this semester. I have done all of this while having issues with severe anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder. Plus family wise I have had a lot of stress with a father suffering from alcoholism (but is getting better) and a sister who has anxiety & severe depression and my mom this past fall was told she had a chance of breast cancer, but was told just a month ago she is cancer free.

I have weighed my Pro’s and Con’s of both sides

Pros to Transferring

• Closer to home
• Work on getting my cat to become my emotional support pet to live on campus
• Get to make friends, as I will spend more time on campus
• Better college reputations
• Located in larger cities
• Would be considered In-State
• Better weather

Cons to Transferring

• Unsure as to if they will accept all of my credits
• Will not have a car to use
• Will have more loans to take out
• Will have to live on campus
• Cannot continue to sell online (all spending money gets cut down significantly)
• Would become third college attended

Pros to Rhode Island College

• Already enrolled
• Theater Program Great
• Saves on Housing by living at Grandmothers
• Found my love for Theater while attending
• Took all my credits from my first college
• I have a car available to use
• Can travel on weekends
• Can keep up with selling online through eBay & Poshmark
• I could finish my pre-req’s this coming year and then transfer to a better school

Cons of Rhode Island College

• Lonely
• Away from Home
• Miss my cat who could be my emotional support pet
• Older Buildings & Materials
• Out of State Tuition
• Has a lot of internal problems with staff & higher ups
• Offers low amounts of financial aid
• Have to take out 3rd party student loans

Extra Details

First College: Southern New Hampshire University
Second College: Rhode Island College
HS GPA (Unweighted): 2.957
HS GPA (Weighted): 3.613
Rank: 241/431
Major: General Theater & Business Management
Age: 20
Transfer School Choices: University of North Texas & University of Texas at Dallas

2

Sorry to hear you’re going through a rough time.

  1. Why can't you bring your cat to your grandmother's house?
  2. When you count the "more loans," costs of living on-campus, and inability to sell online, is it still significantly cheaper to transfer?
  3. Maybe there's some research you can do to see how many of their credits they'll accept. That's important; extra courses you have to take to graduate means extra costs.
  4. I think that regardless of what you do, you should seek professional help for your depression / anxiety / eating disorder. You might find Rhode Island College more bearable and it easier to go out and make friends. I dealt with the same things, and even though I also got good grades, I was pretty miserable. Your school might offer services for free.
3

Can you join some clubs where you’re all working toward the same goal (charity such as Habitat for humanity, for instance)? You may feel less lonely.

DO find help at your college. This is very important. There should be counselors, etc.

Can you specifically indicate how much in federal and 3rd party loans we’re talking about at each college?

Would your grandmother accept your cat?

Could you attend… the University of Rhode Island? Look and see if it’s cheaper than CRI!

UNT and UTD are better colleges than CRI but do they have Living Learning communities for transfers?

4

Where are you from? Your current/past schools are north east usa and the future ones are texas.

why do you want to transfer? I cannot imagine it is the best plan to keep moving colleges if you have depression/anxiety…

Have you been medically evaluated for dpression/anxiety?