Grownups' Thoughts on VERY Atypical Ivy Applicant?

Parents Forum
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<p>I have a friend who next year plans to apply for transfer to places like MIT, HYPS, and carnegie mellon. I’m trying to help him, and would like to know whether he has a realistic chance.</p>

<p>His grades from 9th-11th were dismal (enormous tragedy/psychiatric complications for a while…he doesn’t want to let colleges know about this part of himself, but i feel it’s necessary to explain how far he’s come). He did earn 5’s on the AP English, Comp Sci, and US Gov’t exams, though. For 12th grade he attended a dual-enrollment sort of highschool at the local community college, where he earned a 4.0.</p>

<p>He is now a freshman in the honors college at Florida Int’l University, earning mostly As and a few Bs in calculus, physics, chemistry classes (GPA 3.5)</p>

<p>His grades and scores have never done justice to his personality or intellect. He’ll get AMAZING recommendations from his employers/select professors. He’s the most mature and intelligent person I’ve ever met. I don’t know whether it’ll make a huge difference, but i hope to send in a very long and gushing letter about him to admissions offices. (Would it validate my opinions to mention that the author is a Harvard student? i’ll be pretentious if it gives more weight to my letter)</p>

<p>Currently, he is:</p>

<p>-webmaster for his Honors college’s honor society, and likely to be president of it next year.</p>

<p>-founder and president of the Linux Users Group of Miami. The incorporated entity is known as the ‘Miami-Dade Open Source Group, Inc.’ It’s a non-profit corporation. </p>

<p>-vice-president of product development for a business which provides communications solutions to other small and mid-size businesses. He’s had several interships, at larger such companies…also related to product development.</p>

<p>Basically, he’s a very atypical applicant.</p>

<p>Any advice, thoughts would be greatly appreciated :)</p>

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<p>Basically, he’s NOT a very atypical applicant. The Ivies have thousands of “atypical” applicants (some of them looking a lot “different” than he does), reject most of them, accept a few. </p>

<p>Still, he should apply, and anything that makes him stand out in person needs to stick out like a sore thumb on paper.</p>

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<p>Why does he have an interest in going to an IVY league school? Why is that important?</p>

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<p>“His grades and scores have never done justice to his personality or intellect.”</p>

<p>That could be a problem. Ivies don’t admit people just because they’re smart.</p>

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<p>Agree with mini, the only time an applicant has a zero percent chance in transfers is if he doesn’t apply. I should note, however, that if he’s looking at schools like MIT, earning Bs in calculus, physics, and chemistry classes at his current college would not help his chances. MIT has accepted fewer than ten transfer students in each of the past few years, and they look specifically at the transfer applicant’s calculus and physics grades in college. I’d be pretty sure that the tiny few who are accepted have stellar college academic records <em>and</em> notable achievements; at very least, much of the competition will be strong in those areas. (From the MIT Transfer Student admissions website: "There is no minimum required GPA. However, competitive applicants have a GPA of 3.5 or above, and mostly “A"s in mathematics and science courses.”) He should be looking at the Common Data Sets for the schools he’s interested in now, to see what their transfer acceptance figures are and what factors each school considers important, and see how he might fare. Transfer applications often do include a “secondary school report” which would make his HS record available to the schools he’s applying to, and the usual standardized test results are also usually required; if there are extenuating circumstances around his HS performance, it might be worthwhile to have a recommender or an optional essay explain. Recommendations are very important in transfer applications and are usually given much weight; if you know him in a professional or academic context, your letter may be useful, but not because you’re a student at College X and you think highly of him. The most useful letters are from a college advisor and professors who’ve taught the applicant in courses relevant to his academic interests. Business and professional colleagues are useful also, but usually just as supplements to the required academic recommendations.</p>

<p>At some of the schools you’ve mentioned, transfer admission is far more competitive than even freshman admission. With the activities you’ve mentioned, your friend would have a good chance at making the “stick out like a sore thumb” noises mini mentions. However, you make one comment that is a bit troubling: “His grades and scores have never done justice to his personality or intellect.” Unfortunately, with the small number of transfer openings available at these top schools, grades and scores are an integral part of the transfer application. </p>

<p>Best of luck to your friend: he’s got a lot going for him, and sounds likely to be a success wherever he ends up. Putting in some research time now to look into potential transfer schools could yield good results for him in another year.</p>

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<p>Being deeply mired in the transfer admissions process at the moment, I have a few observations.[ul][<em>]There are a number of colleges which no longer consider your HS record if you are going to be a Junior transfer. HYPS level schools tend NOT to be among these, however. OTOH, Carnegie Mellon specifically states that a transfer’s college record can offset a poor hs record. [</em>]With the applicant you describe, it matters a LOT what field(s) he is targeting. Transfer to MIT, CMU, HYPS in a science-related field is going to be daunting with the B’s showing up in the science courses. If he is soc sci/humanities bound, things would look different. [<em>]I would not expect a gushing letter from a Harvard student to be of much value, unless there is some special feature about the writer which we don’t know about here.[/ul]To me, he sounds like a strong candidate for transfer depending on [ul][*]WHY he wants to transfer and how he conveys that in his application [</em>]WHERE he wants to transfer - dstark’s question is directly on target, why is he targeting ivies? A student who has a strong reason for leaving his current school will do the work to find suitable schools at all levels of selectivity, just as for a freshman application process. A student who would be happy to stay where he is but just wants to “give it a go” at HYPSM etc. might as well try. But he will need to be strong in every aspect of his application and realize that the “average” chances for transfer to these schools are low.[/ul]Transfer chances seem to range from about 3% (eg Stanford) to 20-25% (some of the other lottery-type schools) from my browsing various common data sets. Yet a school like Purdue (top-ranked in Engineering fields) accepts over 75% of transfer applicants. Unfortunately, even this data masks what is likely going on - easy transfer in certain fields, much lower odds in those top-ranked majors. But you get the idea.</p>

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<p>thank you so much for all of that information! </p>

<p>i wonder, does the college determine for which year/level of entry the transfer applicant is a candidate?</p>

<p>if it’s up to the student to decide whether he wants to apply as a freshman or sophomore, then would he have better chances competing for a spot in the freshman class, instead of relying on a select few openings in the sophomore class?</p>

<p>my friend is willing to apply as a freshman, if that is a more fruitful option.</p>

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<p>At most schools, students who have already enrolled in a college somewhere cannot apply as freshman applicants, only as transfers.</p>

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<p>ontolome, do you realize that your description allows to identify this person? If an admission officer reads this, he will have the information your friend “doesn’t want to let colleges know”.</p>

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<p>I doubt that he can apply as a freshman anywhere. In effect, the college does make the determination. An applicant cannot omit portions of his educational history. If accepted, the school will review each course taken, looking at catalogue description, sometimes texts used, # credits and grade received. The college will then “articulate” and grant credit for the matching course/# credits at the new school. # of credits will determine class standing.</p>

<p>It begs the question - what are his reasons for wanting to transfer and how has he identified the schools he’s currently targeting? If you give us more info on this aspect, we may be able to help more. </p>

<p>ontolome - applying as a Freshman would not increase his chances my much, anyway, at most schools. Maybe at MIT/Stanford - but increased chances are still very low lottery chances. Take Stanford as an example, average chance of a Deny as a Freshman ~90%; average chance as a Transfer ~95-97%. </p>

<p>marmat103 may be correct, but I frequently find myself hoping that adreps have better things to do than plow through threads like this and then try and match them up to an applicant. So, what’s done is done.</p>

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<p>I’m reading “Learning Outside the Lines” about two kids with learning disabilities who ended up transferring to Brown. I don’t know if any of it pertains here, but it is interesting reading about two kids that one might think of as “atypical” transfer applicants.</p>

<p>MIT with B’s in science courses seems unlikely.</p>

<p>The reason your friend wants to transfer? Jmmom mentioned that above. I think that aspect of the transfer application is very important.</p>

<p>And Jmmom–good luck to your son as he goes through this as well. He has the reason for transferring aspect nailed pretty well, doesn’t he. What a year. I’m pulling for you and your S as you go through this.</p>

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<p>mstee - I haven’t gotten around to reading the book, but Jonathan Mooney spoke at our HS a couple of years ago. Very impressive guy, and he sure is persistent!</p>

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<p>Ontolome, as an fyi, Princeton does not accept transfer students. It has no transfer program.</p>