My D is currently a first year student at a 2-year SUNY community college in New York. On completion, she plans to transfer to a small LAC -preferably in the Mid-west. majoring in biology. Her high school was in Japan, for reason I enrolled her in a community college where she could get ESL lessons. She has done well so far in her classes, especially in her preferred subjects biology and maths with a GPA of 4.0
My question is, which schools should she apply to that could give her FA as a transfer student. I’m concerned about her college cost as we can’t afford that. She doesn’t like public state colleges because they tend to be big with larger classes. She wants to major in Biology and hopefully apply to medical school . Your input and advice are highly appreciated.
Are you NYS residents?
@sybbie719 can transfer students get Excelsior?
Unless parent is a NYS resident with a physical presence in NYS then D will not be eligible for NYS aid. OP D’d would also need to successfully complete 30 credits this year in order to be on track to receive excelsior
If op is concerned about costs, why mid west? My advice is to run the net price calculator for all schools they are interested in having D attend. OP needs to go into this knowing there is very little merit money for transfer students. Since D is transferring at the end of her freshman year, most of the weight in the admissions process will still be on high school script test scores (possibly including TOFEL)
Bryn Mawr and some of the other women’s colleges have special interest in recruiting community college graduates. She should take a look at them. Run the net price calculators ar their websites, and see if the numbers can work for you.
She’s a New York resident but, can only qualify for Excelsior grant during her second year of college.
Thanks for your suggestion. We shall add Bryn Mawr to her list of colleges. I wonder what you think of Agnes Scott? It’s already in her list.
She will be transferring at the completion of her 2-year associates. If we could help it, we would want her to attend a small college in a suburb or small town in the Midwest - she has lived all her life in the big city of Tokyo.
So far these are the schools she’s considering to apply to:
Kalamazoo
Agnes Scott
Austin College
Denison
Hiram
Ripon
College of Wooster
Illinois Wesleyan
Ohio Wesleyan
Goucher
Juniata
McDaniel
Beloit
Albion
Knox
Earlham
Run net price calculators on all of them.
Susquehanna is pretty generous. See if their net price calculator asks about transfer students.
None of the schools on your list meet 100% demonstrated need
She will be eligible for excelsior years 2-4 as long as you fall in the income requirements and she is on track to graduate in 4 years (accumulating 15 credits a year)
Don’t forget the smaller SUNY schools: Outside if the 4 research universities the rest of the SUNY system consists of smaller schools.
Is she a NY resident?
Your daughter may not realize that as a transfer student, she’ll be in UPPER division courses and those will not be the huge classes that one sees as a frosh/soph at state schools. Once a student is in upper division courses, the classes are often 10-40 students per class.
My kids went to a very large state school, but because they had so many AP credits, they took mostly upper division courses. They had class sizes as small at 8 students.
How much can you afford to pay each year? Many schools give lousy aid to transfer students.
Run the Net Price Calculators but if they’re not asking if the student is a transfer student, the results may be wrong.
As back ups/safeties, have her also apply to some SUNYs. Any of them would be find for a bio premed.
As @sybbie719 mentioned, there are smaller SUNYs.
@sybbie719 which smaller SUNYs would you recommend? Any that would have almost an LAC feel?
Since med school is very expensive, she shouldn’t take on debt (or much debt) for undergrad.
Btw…as soon as she transfers, she needs to contact her science profs and ask if she can help them with any of their research. She also needs to attend their “office hours”…even if she doesn’t need much help. She needs to help them get to know her because she’s going to need them for LORs for med school apps. As a transfer student, she’s going to have more difficulty with LORs.
Yes to Agnes Scott if the financial aid numbers look promising.
Cornell’s state affiliated divisions take a lot of transfer from the NYS community colleges, and the aid is generally good. She might want to look at HumEc and CALS there as a pre-med. The university as a whole can seem pretty big, but the junior and senior year courses as a nutrition major (for example) should be fairly small.
Thanks for all your insightful information.
I wonder how academically rigorous Cornell University is - Competitive or collaborative? She would prefer a more collaborative environment because her English isn’t there yet to go again the other top students.
I would suggest that she take her time at her community college and gain better fluency with English. She won’t want to handicap herself because of a language barrier at her 4 year college or in med school. In med school, information is coming at you like a fire hose, and not being fully fluent in English would make things much more difficult.
Is she finishing her frosh year at her CC? What’s she doing over the summer to improve fluency? What is she doing for medically-related ECs? Is she doing any shadowing? Any volunteering?
I plan on continue enrolling her in ESL classes when she comes home for summer vacation. During the same time she could look for a volunteer work in the city. Otherwise, we had not been asking her to do much outside her academics - studying in foreign language could be overwhelming for a freshman, I assumed.
Thanks mom2collegekids for letting me know what she needs to do to be on track of her goal.
In my observation (I was a grad student in CALS and my husband was a grad student in HumEc), the environment at Cornell can vary quite a bit from one division of the university to another. If she keeps pulling good grades at her CC, transfer there might be entirely possible. But she should look at the possible majors, the divisions that offer those majors, and then visit each of those divisions separately.
Is she currently taking ESL classes at her CC, or is she already in academic classes? If she’s in ESL classes now, what do her current instructors advise for the summer? Before you have her commit to summer ESL classes, find out about that. She might be best off just getting a summer job just like a regular US college kid.
mom2collegekids
She only did ESL for a semester and they deemed her good enough, so she’s already started her academic program. I for one think she still needs more tutoring to be able to do college-level work, but so far her first semester and her midterm results are up there.
We shall look at Cornell more closely add it to her chosen list. Honestly, any college her list, that offers her a generous FA will be a huge relief.
Meanwhile, I continue to thank you for your knowledge and insightful advice.
SUNY Geneseo is the public liberal arts college of the SUNY system. It has around 5500 students - larger than many private LAC’s, but still a small-to-midsized college experience for a very affordable price if you are in-state. It is in rural upstate NY, closer to Ohio than to NYC. I would suggest visiting and familiarizing yourselves with this school and with its articulation agreements with the NY community colleges. It is every bit as well-regarded as the private LAC’s on your list, and the cost is more predictable. Class sizes at Geneso per the common data set:
2-9 students: 11% of classes
10-19 students: 21% of classes
20-29 students: 26% of classes
30-39 students: 20% of classes
40-49 students: 13% of classes
50-99 students: 7% of classes
Over 100 students: 3% of classes
aquapt
Thanks for letting me know the class size data of SUNY Geneseo, Initially, Geneseo was In her list, but when I read somewhere (in CC?) that they have large classes in their popular majors, one of which is Biology, she was put off. I may have to contact the school to be sure.
I would guess that the large class sizes are mainly in the lower-division classes that she would already be done with as a junior transfer; but it’s always good to confirm.