To Successful Junior Transfer to Top 50 Schools

Transfer Students
1

<p>Hey guys,</p>

<p>I’m going to be a rising junior when I decide to transfer from my current school. A little background on how my admissions panned out when I applied as a freshman: I was a QuestBridge Scholar who applied to pretty much all their partner schools and some others (Brown - who wasn’t a partner at the time, Dartmouth), and was denied from all of the schools except I was waitlisted at Amherst and Stanford. </p>

<p>My GPA in HS is solid (~4.0, 5.something when you factor in AP), my ECs are as well. I currently attend a Tier 3 public university and am in the Honors Program here. Most of my courses were or are honors, and I have maintained a 3.9 GPA. I have solid ECs in college and I know I can get solid recs. </p>

<p>Some questions I have not received definitive answers on are: should I retake ACT/SATs? I feel as though my scores held me back from admission to top colleges, but I know there is a great argument on whether to take them again in college. I scored a 29 on my ACT in high school.</p>

<p>Another question: how would you recommend going about getting letters of rec? I know some Brown and Princeton alum in my department, but would it be a stronger presentation if I asked for letters of rec from heads of my department and top researchers in my field? </p>

<p>Any other advice would be helpful! Thank you!</p>

2

<p>Hello and welcome to CC!</p>

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<p>I’m not quite sure about your timing, do you mean you’ll apply for transfer during your soph year and actually attend your new school as a jr? If so, what you’ve done in college will have much more weight than your HS record and standardized testing.</p>

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<p>The characteristics of the writer of your LORs (alum, head of dept., top researcher) don’t matter, it’s what they write about YOU that is important.</p>

3

<p>Yes, I apologize for the lack of clarity. I am applying as a sophomore and hope to start my junior year by the time I transfer successfully.</p>

4

<p>My advice is to 1) make sure you apply to non-Ivy top schools like Northwestern, Rice, WashU, UNC, and Emory. They tend to have many more open spots than the Ivies which can be incredibly selective for transfers. 2) Think about retaking the ACT, or actually the SAT this time. It would help to be in a higher range for the top 10 schools and Ivies.</p>