Confused on Transfering

Transfer Students
1

To begin I ended high school doing really poorly, and wanted to attend Michigan State University.

I went to CC for a year, consistently did well with A’s and B’s and transferred after one year of community college, I’m now into my second semester at MSU and I haven’t been enjoying it, and as a result I’ve been doing really poorly, my GPA has tanked below a 2.0 and I’ve been borderline depressive and very unhappy. I attribute most of it to how big the school is, and how I sort of feel invisible. The CC I went to was in a tiny town, and my high school population was even smaller, which I really enjoyed, but with the prospect of going to college I thought I’d try something new.

My question is, if I wanted to transfer to a smaller school, have I completely ruined my chances because of my academic performance my first semester and how I’ve started my second semester? Is it possible to apply and explain to admissions why my GPA has come so low? I’ve hated MSU so far, and my grades show it.

2

When schools accept students they want to have some confidence that the student will succeed. MSU accepted you based on your CC results, which super-ceded your poor high school results.

Now you are back to square one: you have poor results, you think that you have identified the reason(s) and you think that the solution is a different school. Unfortunately, with your current marks, you are asking another college to bet that you are right, and that is a big ask.

Now that you have identified the problem, you can work with it. Go to the college counseling center. Find a smaller cohort- through a club, through a class, through an activity. It’s early in the semester- put your back into this term and show what you can do. Get the marks that show you can handle university level work. Then look at transferring.