Laziness was my downfall. I am reforming myself. What are my chances of transferring?

Transfer Students
1

Hey everyone.

A few months ago, I created a post on this site that had a decent amount of traffic, and I got a ton of replies, some helpful, some not so much. You can click my profile to see it, but I’ll sum it up.

I was upset. I applied to a total of 12 schools. The only 2 I got into were my in-state safeties. Every other school I applied to rejected me, and only one of those 10 rejections was from a wait list. After posting my stats, pretty much everyone said the same thing. Everything was good except my GPA. I had roughly a 3.51/4.22 GPA when I was applying, and my grades were in a slight downward trend.

Throughout high school I was so focused on making myself unique through my extracurriculars and essays that I didn’t mind my grades too much. After all, I heard about so many kids from my school from previous years who didn’t have good grades, and had a similar background as me, and they got into schools I could only wish of getting into. The main reason my grades weren’t even that great was not because I was challenging myself with courses I couldn’t handle. It was because I was not working hard enough. I’d postpone work to the last minute, wouldn’t study for tests until the day before, I’d rarely pay attention in class, and I preferred to enjoy my time instead of work. I paid the price, and I regret my decisions.

I have learned from my mistakes and am looking to improve myself. I want to transfer for two reasons. One, research isn’t as abundant in the fields that I am interested in at my current school, and two, I want to prove to both myself and my parents that I’m capable of so much more. So far, I am much more proactive, I am actively working, and am maintaining good grades (I know it’s only been about a month, but so far I have a 100% or high 90’s in all my classes).

I am currently a freshman, and I want to transfer to a more prestigious school for my sophomore year. Many of these schools were schools that I previously applied to as a high school senior. Could someone tell me my chances of being accepted provided the following information? It would be greatly appreciated.

The schools I am thinking of applying to are: Cornell (biology), Columbia (biochemisry, or biology, or neuroscience), Emory (biology, or Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology), John’s Hopkins (biology, or neuroscience), Northwestern (biology, or neuroscience), Rice (biochemistry and cell biology, or biology), Wash U (biology), and Vanderbilt (Biochemistry and Chemical Biology, or Biological Sciences).

GPA/Test Scores

•High school GPA: around 3.51 UW / 4.22 W (not sure what it was after senior year)

•ACT score: 34

•Projected College GPA: 3.9-4.0 (this is what I’m aiming for, and I think it’s doable)

Awards

•National Merit Scholarship letter of commendation

•Winner of the Protein Data Bank video challenge (was publish on NIH director’s blog)

•National biology olympiad semifinalist in 2017

Current college activities

•Esports club, will be representing college for Quake and/or Smash Brothers in collegiate leagues

•Biology honors society, expecting to be inducted in the spring to become a full-fledged member

•Am in the process of becoming a certified personal trainer

•Been given an opportunity to shadow research under a professor (still looking for research opportunities themselves)

I have high school activities listed in my other post, if you want to know them just ask me.

2

If you try to transfer after one year (meaning that you apply quite soon now), then you will have only one semester of university grades when they are considering your application. Your high grades will still matter quite a bit. Your high school GPA is low for the schools that you want to transfer to, as you have sort of discovered the hard way.

If you try to transfer after two years, then you will have three semesters of university grades. If you get straight A’s or very close to it in university then you have a much better chance to transfer.

However, my impression from the other thread is that you are at TCNJ. You should plan for TCNJ to be more challenging than high school, and probably more challenging than you might be thinking right now. Getting all A’s might be tougher than you realize. Classes are likely to start off a bit slow but then get more difficult as the semester goes on, and more difficult as you get to higher level classes.

Take your current school very seriously and work hard. Attend all classes, pay attention at all times, and try very hard to stay ahead in your work. With this you should be fine.

Also, if you are in a field where graduate school is likely, and if you are getting a good financial deal where you are, then you should very seriously consider working hard for four years where you are, then going to a higher ranked university for graduate school.