DISCLAIMER: My situation is very complicated and I’ve done a lot of thinking about everything so the explanation below is fairly winded. Also, the girl doesn’t come into the story for a little while 
I’m a freshman heterosexual white male currently in the honors program at a top 40 school on a half ride merit scholarship and am attending with a Federal Pell grant (If that gives you an indication of my family’s financial situation). During my freshman admissions process, I was waitlisted and subsequently denied by Rice (dream school), Vanderbilt, and Dartmouth. Due to the fact that my current school doesn’t have an engineering program, this left me feeling like I was very much cheated out of a competitive engineering education. For reference, my high school stats are listed below.
UW GPA: 3.9
ACT Composite: 34
AP’s: Calc BC 5, Chem 4, Phys C Mechanics 4, US History 4
-Varsity Tennis and Baseball
-National Honor Society
-Have a website that showcases pro-bono digital design work
-Interned as a software dev & or graphic designer at prestigious startups every summer of high school and as a result got an amazing letter of rec from someone I previously worked for who is now an Amazon exec.
-Great teacher recs
-Really solid essays that highlighted my drive to innovate
Having glimpsed prestige but ultimately letting it slip through my fingers, I want to transfer for a few reasons. The first few being that I’m currently majoring in math and physics but want to be doing engineering, I feel like I could be getting a higher quality education, I’m not making business connections with the kinds of people that I want to be, there is minimal diversity here, and this school has a strong reputation as a party school. I’m not into the party culture, and it’s a large part of life here.
Which leads us into the second half of this beast. There’s this girl. I won’t bore you with details, but it suffices to say that we’re the same age, were together for a long time in high school, have been through a lot of really difficult stuff together, and I can say with the utmost certainty that this woman is going to be my wife. I understand that having that knowledge may make it seem easier for us to be apart and have security in our relationship, but it has made us realize to a greater extent how much we want to be closer together. During the summer, we made the adult and difficult decision to go to the best schools that we got into and those that offered us the most aid. That put her in the northeast and me far enough away that I can only see her on breaks. Having done a semester now, we mutually agreed that the situation needs to change if at all possible. All of that being said, I’m applying to the following schools for fall 2017 transfer admission.
Rice (engineering, top ranked)
Dartmouth (engineering, ideal location, top ranked)
Brown (ideal location, top ranked)
Tufts (engineering, ideal location, top ranked)
Boston College (ideal location, top ranked)
Boston University (engineering, ideal location)
This semester I’ve become involved in some awesome volunteer organizations that I’m very passionate about (This part was very much average in high school), assuming finals don’t obliterate me this semester I’ll end up with a 3.92 GPA, and I’ve made some good connections with great professors which will hopefully translate into good recs.
So, having much of my want to transfer being predicated upon love, should I include that information in my common app essay? Pertaining to the other reasons, are my grades good enough to warrant admission to the schools I listed? Is a degree from a top-ranked school much more valuable for graduate admission as opposed to one from a 40ish ranked school? How do graduate admissions committees view a math and physics double major applying to an engineering program? Do professors take requests for recs as an insult to their teaching or their program? Do my waitlists at Rice and Dartmouth mean anything in terms of transfer admission there?
I’m aware that worse come to worst I’ll have to “stick it out” here and receive a world-class education at a fraction of sticker price. I’m incredibly thankful for what I’ve been given, but I have an internal drive to always shoot for better.
I understand this is a lot of stuff, so I very much appreciate any comments and or answers you may have.
Thank you!