Denied as a Transfer but asked to Reapply

Colleges & Universities Cornell University
1

Hello all,

I recently applied to Cornell from Clarkson University as a transfer applicant to Civil Engineering, and was denied. The Engineering department reached out to me afterwards, stating that although faculty was interested in my application, my first-year courses did not fulfill the requirements to be admitted as a sophomore. However, the email stated that should I be able to use my next year at Clarkson to fulfill the requirements of sophomore admission to Cornell, the faculty would be interested in considering my application again.

My questions are thus:

Is this a common email? More importantly, what should I think of it? The way I’m treating it is that presuming I can meet the transfer requirements and maintain my extracurriculars/GPA, I have a pretty decent shot at being accepted next year. I’d like to hear if anyone else has received such a request and knows more about it.

Thanks for any information available!

2

Cornell has offered a guaranteed transfer option for decades. Although the encouraging email is not a GTO equivalent, it is encouraging. GTO students are required to take certain courses & achieve certain grades in order to trigger the guaranteed part of the GTO. In short, if you take the necessary courses & earn a “B” or higher, then you should be admitted as a transfer student to Cornell.

3

I don’t recall reading about any similar letter to a transfer applicant here on CC, so I would think it isn’t all that common. But then I don’t read all the transfer threads.

I read it the same way you (OP) do. There is no guarantee implied, but then they wouldn’t waste their time sending this to a transfer applicant for no reason. The engineering school is not short of transfer applicants.

1 states some (freshman) applicants are offered a Transfer Option, but it should be reinforced that this doesn't apply to you. (Which #1 does also say, but just to avoid confusion). As far as I know the engineering school doesn't issue these anyway, and the colleges that do offer it specify criteria to be met to trigger guaranteed admission. Which it seems are not all the same. I've seen various cutoffs posted: 3.0. 3.3, 3.5... Unlike TO recipients, your letter doesn't say what grades you have to meet, or that they will necessarily accept you no matter how you do. IMO the safest assumption is what you said, to keep up your grades at current levels.

But I agree that it does seem encouraging.