<p>I would stay if you cannot replicate or come close to what you’re doing at the honors college. However, I will say this…you don’t need to actually stand out at many elite schools to benefit from the resources so please stop worrying about that. Awesome opps. are available to those who simply pursue them. While even more opps. may open up from you standing out in a class (and thus a professor recognizing your talent), the baseline opps are quite solid such that you can create an awesome experience/set of experiences that enhance you professionally and intellectual without being at the “top of the bunch”. As for learning, if you choose the wrong courses, you will not learn more, trust me. At least creative writing and English is amazing here though. I suppose you would meet a much larger group of inspiring students here (especially in the social sciences and humanities), but don’t over-rate Emory. I am not very sure if starting from scratch at Emory and paying lots of money is worth it. If you truly want to entertain this, start finding out what you can get involved in at Emory that would give you just as much satisfaction as your current experience (and maybe contact people presiding over the experience). Maybe you can get involved with the Wheel (it seems easy to gain access to it) and other departmental magazines/ undergraduate run journals, I don’t know. But you need to think about these things.<br>
One thing I’ll say academically/intellectually is that because of Emory’s creative writing program and Rare Book collections, the amount of activities, seminars, and talks (by well known writers of all types) associated with writing and literature are outstanding. I think this is the main reason we’re known to be a top place for aspiring writers (and because some of the well-known writers and poets are actually teaching here. Tretheway even chooses to teach a freshman seminar which is ridiculous given her status). All things writing and literary are pretty well-celebrated here. Emory is a good place for the more intellectual humanities oriented person (cannot exactly say the same for a more intellectual science major. While there are many classes for such people, the UG intellectual community in the sciences is nowhere near as activated or inclined to attend science seminars and talks at random to such a large degree). Somehow the humanities and many social sciences have done a good job making a HUGE share of students actually care about their disciplines beyond the classroom or traditional research setting. I think I know how such differences arise, but that’s a discussion for another day .</p>
<p>But anyway, Emory is a great place, but you just really need to plan to hit the ground running to get anything comparable to what you have now. I would indeed reconsider transferring if you think that it would be too hard to do this. However, I would say that many Oxford students provide a great example of how to maximize Emory as a transfer/anyone who did not start on Emory’s Atlanta campus as a freshman. It seems easy to make things at Emory work in your favor especially if you were already great at the previous place. Perhaps aig could shed some light</p>