Hello I am a senior in high school going off to a LAC. My high school grades were severely effected by my personal family issues. Basically I wasn’t in an environment where I could put academics as the first priority, even though I used to be a top student before all of that. I will be graduating high school with a 3.0 GPA with an upward trend though the years. I want to transfer into a top 20 school as a junior. Not schools like Harvard or Stanford obviously but schools like Cornell, Vanderbilt,
UC Berkeley, Georgetown, USC. If I keep a near 4.0 gpa during college and participate in extracurriculars, is it realistic that I will be able to get into one of these colleges? What other preparations should I take if there are any?
Of course you have a chance if your academics are good. A lot will depend on what major your are interested in and what the admission rates of your target universities are for transfers. Not all of them accept a lot of transfers. However, you might decide that staying at the LAC will serve your career goals as well and you could target the more selective schools for a graduate degree.
I have already decided that I am for sure going to transfer. I was just wondering if it was realistic for me to target those schools that I have listed such as Cornell, Vanderbilt, USC, Georgetown, Berkeley. I know harvard’s acceptance rate is like 1% and stanford is like 3%. So I am targeting more realistic schools with much higher transfer rates such as Cornell (20%), USC (30%), Georgetown (12%) etc.