Hello everyone,
I’m a prospective transfer student and I currently attend a private all-womens’ LAC. My college is a 6 hour flight away from home. Homesickness hit pretty hard a month after college started and it never went away. I managed to struggle through a year and a half so far, but I’ll admit that it has been the roughest part of my life thus far.
My grades were unaffected. My overall GPA is 3.875 as a premed student. I have a good GPA and strong course rigor, but my application blatantly lacks extracurriculars. The only new extracurricular since high school ended is ~24 hours of volunteering at a local hospital. I have some good accomplishments from my high school years (playing piano for 10 years, an unpaid bio internship, etc), but they feel dated and unimportant.
I try to address this in my Commonapp essay, but I still feel that my application is weak. I’m worried because I’m applying to some prestigious institutions, like Scripps College and Pomona College.
Any advice, personal experiences, or insight would be appreciated.
a tentative bump since I posted pretty late
Do you have some matches and safeties as well?
I have also applied to 5 UCs (SB, Irvine, Davis, SD, LA.) I was already accepted to SCU but I declined it.
Transferring to a safety wouldn’t be very favorable… as a premed student, the highest quality education possible is my #1 priority. I’d just tough it out crying every day for the next 2.5 years.
I’m curious why you applied to SCU if you already declined their offer.
Earlier in fall semester, I was so miserable that my number one priority was escaping my situation and transferring back close to home. I doubted I could even finish my sophomore year, much less the entirety of undergrad. Since then I’ve made a few friends and changed my attitude a bit.
I’m still miserable there, but slightly less so. Just that now I can see clearly that my future is more important than my temporary suffering now.
Asking since all these colleges are spread out - are you hoping to live at home? Do you think that moving to CA will fix the homesickness even if you are far from your home? And have you spoken to the counseling office at your current college?
I’ve made multiple appointments with a counselor but I personally don’t find it helpful.
I don’t think transferring back to CA will fix my homesickness/loneliness, but at least I won’t be as far away from home as I am now. Being a whole coast away is too big of a step for me to take right now.
Even if I accepted SCU I doubt I’d live at home. Eventually I have to become an independent adult, and I’d just be delaying the inevitable for four more years.
I am asking those questions because I read posts on CC written by homesick kids who are one hour away from home. Are you planning to go home on the weekends? Do you really think that transferring will “fix” the problem? It sounds like you are doing really well academically where you are, but I understand that you are unhappy there. Just try to make sure that if you do transfer you will be happier at the new college. It can be harder (though not impossible) to make friends and find your niche when you are a transfer student. @ettudis - I wish you all the best and I hope you find a solution that works for you.
thank you, @MamaBear16 ! Those are some pretty solid points that you bring up, and I’ve been mentally debating some of them for a while.
I think at worst, I transfer and I’m severely unhappy again for another 2 years at a different school… which I know I can deal with, since that’s what I went through for the past 2 years of undergrad. Hopefully it won’t come to that though.