Just when I thought my daughter was getting settled into her freshman year at Carnegie Mellon, she got an email from the admissions department at Cornell asking if she was thinking of using her “transfer option” for the fall of 2019 and reminding her to apply for transferring. She had no idea she even had the transfer option and thought her last letter from Cornell back in June was a very nicely worded rejection. In retrospect, we see that she was given a transfer option. Cornell was always her top choice school but her experience with them has been like that of a very bad boyfriend…strung along from ED…deferred…wait listed and then, we thought, rejected…only to be reeled back in to the idea of going to school there again.
She now thinks she wants to apply for a transfer and I have concerns about how this will work. If anyone has experience with this, I would appreciate any input you can offer. How hard is it for soph transfers to find a place at a new school? I feel like she would be starting all over again after finally being comfortable at CMU.
How strict is the admissions committee with GPA? She is transferring from a very rigorous college and currently has a 3.6 but who knows what it will be at the end of the semester and by spring mid term grades. Does Cornell take into account the rigor of the school from which the applicants are applying?
How does housing and orientation work for incoming transfers? Will she automatically be housed with fellow transfer students? Part of me is sad that she will need to start over, that she will be leaving friends at CMU and that she will have missed the freshman bonding experience if she does decide to join the Cornell Class of 2022.
Thanks for any insight.
I expect that Cornell probably will take into account the rigor of the school that she is applying from. However, Cornell will have transfer applicants with 4.0 GPAs. Also, while Carnegie Mellon is a demanding and academically challenging university, Cornell is probably even more challenging. If she is getting a 3.6 at Carnegie Mellon, that suggests that the school is already challenging for her and she is probably already at a school that is a good fit for her.
Carnegie Mellon is a very good university. I would encourage her to stay there, work hard, make friends, and do as well as she can where she is. However, I would allow her to apply to transfer if she wants to do it provided that you can afford to pay for it.
The transfer options I’d heard about specified courses the student would have to take prior to transfer, and also GPA criteria. Was this not the case here?
Most of the transfer options I’ve read about were given by one of the contract colleges. These colleges have majors and curricular requirements that are different from what your daughter might experience at CMU. So there is a question about the academic suitability, based on your daughter’s curricular objectives as she now sees them.
All of your stated social/ adjustrment concerns are well founded, as they are with any transfer student to anywhere.
It is a risk.
CMU is a good school. My own opinion is: if things are going quite satisfactorily where she is, from a social perspective, and there is no huge uptick in the prospective curriculum at Cornell vs CMU, I’d be inclined to stay put. YMMV.
My guess is your daughter’s GPA is “good enough”, given the school and the transfer option.
My own D2 did a sophomore transfer to Cornell into Spring semester. At that time, transfers were scattered basically wherever there were room openings. They were not all roomed together. They had a couple orientation functions at the beginning of the semester, but that was it. She wound up loving it there, but the first few months did involve a transition. Entering in the Fall may be completely different/better, though I don’t know that it is.
I have to agree that if your daughter is happy at CMU, I don’t think it’s worth transferring. She’s already at a great school!
I don’t believe Cornell takes rigor into the equation. The GPA cut off is what it is. Many students are given the guaranteed transfer and start in other rigorous programs.
Housing can also be a bit of a struggle for transfer students. I recall there was a thread last year on the Cornell specific sub forum. Might be worth some time to dig around on that forum.
For students with transfer options, where a stated GPA requirement is specified in their transfer option letter, I would agree that the institution does not factor in, and the GPA requirement is what it is, regardless. Based solely on what I’ve read, here on CC. These students are frequently on CC discussing the pros and cons of attending a more competitive vs. easier first school.
For completeness- though seemingly this does not apply here:- for transfer candidates who are not subject of a transfer option letter, it is not necessarily the same story. There is no published information to provide insight into how Cornell admissions really evaluates GPAs from various institutions for this set of transfer candidates.
My own D2s GPA for transferring was similar to, or lower than, OPs kid. She also attended a “good” school.
She had a lot of other things going for her, but, since she was accepted, it would seem that her GPA didn’t keep her out. She had never applied to Cornell before, so obviously was not given a transfer option. If she had applied there out of high school she probably would have been accepted, IMO.
This is admittedly a sample of one, which is hardly statistically significant. Nevertheless that one has caused me to conclude that the university does take institution into account when evaluating GPAs. For transfer candidates who are not subject to a transfer option with specified criteria.
Though I could be wrong.
But the preponderance of chat here on CC would lead one to conclude that the GPA cutoff specified in one’s transfer option letter is not institution specific. Also the course list they say they require for transfer option seems to be really required. Or at least people who did not meet the list expressed concern about that on CC (but did not necessarily say whether they were accepted later on).