<p>Maurik, ignore the cynics. It’s definitely possible to beat a 1-2% admissions rate. </p>
<p>But first, to address the original post: my friend was accepted to Yale as a sophomore transfer applicant (Yale has a 2% admissions rate, for anyone who’s counting) with a high school SAT score of 2100. That’s relatively low. I’d wager that other matriculants were accepted with even lower scores.</p>
<p>He didn’t retake, and he still got in. Conclude from that what you will. A higher score obviously wouldn’t hurt you, but I’d say one low score ALONE wouldn’t disqualify you (and a higher score ALONE wouldn’t make the difference between admission and rejection). Your application is considered in its totality. Retake the SAT if you’d like, but keep the opportunity cost in mind.</p>
<p>And now let’s address some of the ridiculous stuff that’s been posted in this thread. There’s gonna be a lot of Yale talk (just to clarify: I was accepted as a junior transfer applicant at Yale University during the 2011-2012 admissions cycle, beating a 2% acceptance rate), so gird your loins. (Harvard sucks, by the way. Apply to Yale instead!)</p>
<p>“Harvard’s transfer rate is 2%. I would guess many of the few who succeed have extremely powerful social connections. Maybe their mother is a dean at Harvard. Or their father is the CEO of Oracle.” (justanothertrans)</p>
<p>Beating 2% odds doesn’t require “powerful social connections” or any other (hilariously) quasi-conspiratorial explanation. For instance, none of this year’s 22 Yale transfer matriculants (of 24 transfer acceptances) were sons of CEOs or deans. I doubt many (if any) of Harvard’s transfer matriculants were, either.</p>
<p>“Even if you do all of the things you state in the OP, that means you probably will have zero extracurriculars.” (majoreco)</p>
<p>You think maintaining a 4.0, learning several languages, and having good extracurriculars are all mutually exclusive? Hardly. If anything, a good applicant would interrelate all three goals.</p>
<p>“Your best bet, in these circumstances, is not to add more courses and ‘stuff,’ but to find some aspect of history that is unique and covered only by one or two Harvard professors. Write a paper that shows your incredible insight into that part of history, send it to those professors, and request/offer your special research skills and sources to support their unique research. If you get the Harvard professor on your side and he/she is the one writing your rec, you might just have a chance.” (placido240)</p>
<p>This is particularly bad advice. Sure, if you manage to pull it off, you’ve got a pretty good shot, but it’s an unnecessarily lofty goal. Normal people with normal “stories” get in every year.</p>
<p>“Harvard, Stanford and the likes are just lotto tickets because the transfer rates are so extremely low and one needs a mind-blowing hook to even be considered (and a 4.0 is not it).” (annikasorrensen)</p>
<p>This is wrong. I beat 2% odds (transfer acceptances to Yale and Stanford, for instance), and I didn’t have a “mind-blowing” hook. A bunch of my friends beat 2% odds (transfer acceptances to Yale), and they didn’t have “mind-blowing” hooks. In fact, a lot of them had relatively low SAT scores or mediocre high school GPAs. But the numbers are only one part of your candidacy – and they’re definitely not looking for robot candidates who only churn out perfect SAT scores. (If anything, they’ll go out of their way to reject 'em. Seriously. THOSE people are boring as ****.) They really do consider your application in its entirety. No mind-blowing hooks necessary.</p>
<p>So while there’s obviously an element of chance involved during every transfer admissions cycle at every school, any comparison to the lottery is intellectually dishonest.</p>
<p>“He’ll just be forking over free cash to the school anyway as registration fee.” (altruition)</p>
<p>What an immature and unnecessarily mean oversimplification! And by the way, Harvard (and Yale, and Stanford, and eleven other schools) granted me a waiver of their application fee, and all they wanted was a letter explaining my financial situation. Just a helpful tip!</p>
<p>“Think of it this way: if you’re planning to transfer into a school from a college, then you probably would have had to have been accepted by that school back in senior year.” (altruition)</p>
<p>This is demonstrably false. I personally was accepted by Stanford as a transfer applicant but rejected as a high school applicant. This is true for many other applicants at many other schools during many other admissions cycles.</p>
<p>And finally, for some really, really good advice:</p>
<p>“We can all ASSUME ANYTHING, but it MEANS NOTHING. Don’t waste your time, ‘planning’ what you want to do two years down the line. Instead, work on what you need to do today and then assess your situation when the time comes.” (entomom)</p>
<p>This is what you should take from this thread. Entomom is 100% right. (She usually is!) You actually need to spend some time at Stony Brook before you can assess your odds and figure out where you stand. I personally didn’t consider transferring until after the summer of my freshman year. </p>
<p>In the meantime, keep your GPA as high as possible, do what you love, learn as much as you can, go to lots of parties (really!), make tons of new friends, forget about transferring, and in a year or so decide whether you still want to apply to Harvard (or Yale cough cough seriously Harvard sucks). If you don’t, then I can promise you’ll regret it, and by then you could have plenty of legitimate reasons not to transfer.</p>
<p>But “hurr durr, a 1-2% acceptance rate means you’re just throwing away your money” is a terrible reason not to apply. Take that piece of advice from an aggressively “normal” person who wouldn’t have gotten in at his dream school if he had listened to these idiots.</p>
<p>Edit: Feel free to PM me with any other questions if you want to avoid the nattering nabobs of negativism (hat tip to Spiro T. Agnew).</p>