I was a member of the Class of 2022 at Skidmore College before I took this semester off to work and explore other academic options. Despite thoroughly enjoying my academic experience at Skidmore, I was not a fan of the super-small liberal arts environment that it entailed. I was a tentative Political Science / Environmental Science double major with a 3.5 GPA. In addition, I had already been working closely with a few of my professors on independent research projects (one of which was sponsored by the school). With that, I am assuming I will have some pretty good letters of recommendation to make up for my fairly lackluster GPA.
My high school GPA was 3.8 weighted with a 1360 SAT (first attempt). I also have a lot of sports, extracurriculars and such on my resume. I work on a sustainable farm at my home and am becoming increasingly involved with local environmental activism, particularly oppositional efforts for a large powerplant being built in my hometown (some of my work for this is being published in the Environmental Justice Atlas).
I am here to seek advice in regards to my options, I honestly don’t really know what I am looking for. Ideally, I think I would like to stay in the Northeast but I am certainly open to moving to somewhere that is a perfect fit. Apart from this, the few standards I have in mind are:
- Larger than Skidmore (at least 3,000 undergrad students)
- Good International Affairs / Political Science programs/opportunities
- Agriculture / Environmental Studies program (AG not really a requirement)
- Either very rural or close proximity to a city (No suburban campuses)
- Preferably D1 athletics
I have a very tentative list of schools with March 15 or later transfer deadlines that I have some interest in, it consists of the following:
- University of Vermont
- Dartmouth
- Bucknell
- UPenn
- Villanova
- Johns Hopkins
- Carnegie Mellon
- Ithaca
- Boston College
- Tufts
- Brown
I don’t really know how I stand and what my matches would be but I know I do not want to settle for a school of a lower-tier than Skidmore. Any suggestions/advice is very much appreciated, thanks so much.