Transfer Activities: A Comparison of State Universities to Private Universities

Applying to College
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<p>Transfers are a normal part of the college scene, but the use of transfers can have a huge impact on the size and nature of the student body at a college, particularly at the State Universities. </p>

<p>Using data from collegeboard.com, I reviewed information on transfer activity at the USNWR Top 50. In addition to the total entering, first-time, first-year students (FT/FY) for the entire group of 50 public and private schools (136,337 students), there were 53,972 transfer students admitted. Of the 53,972 transfers, 46,055 (85%) occurred at State Universities. </p>

<p>As one might expect, California (31,432 transfers or 58% of total) was by far the heaviest user of transfer admittance practices and I have broken their numbers out separately. Several other state universities also admitted prominent numbers and percentages of students via this process.</p>

<p>Here are the State Universities (ranked in the USNWR Top 50) and their number of transfer students:</p>

<p>Non-California Publics
2788 U Texas
2123 U Wisconsin
2218 U Florida
1958 U Washington
1244 U North Carolina
1118 U Illinois
1081 U Michigan
838 U Virginia
667 Penn State
518 Georgia Tech
na, William & Mary</p>

<p>California Publics
6110 UC Irvine
5755 UCSD
5754 UC Santa Barbara
5367 UC Davis
5350 UCLA
3096 UC Berkeley</p>

<p>For the 34 private schools in the USNWR Top 50, the total numbers of transfers admitted was 7917 students (15% of total transfers). Only two schools, USC (2071) and NYU (1702) were prominent in their transfer activity and then a large drop off to Cornell (669). Here is the entire list:</p>

<p>2071 USC
1702 NYU
669 Cornell
376 Georgetown
238 Northwestern
231 U Penn
219 Wash U
197 U Rochester
178 Rensselaer
176 Notre Dame
162 Vanderbilt
161 U Chicago
147 Brandeis
136 Emory
132 Lehigh
126 Case Western
123 Boston College
104 Tufts
104 Rice
99 Johns Hopkins
92 Wake Forest
90 Harvard
78 Columbia
72 Stanford
59 Carnegie Mellon
43 Dartmouth
41 Duke
33 Brown
30 Yale
17 MIT
11 Caltech
0 (?) Princeton</p>

<p>na Tulane
na Yeshiva</p>

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<p>Are you referring to the NSSE findings about transfer engagement, or something else? </p>

<p>I think institutions vary in their relationships to community colleges and the degree to which they embrace the mission of facilitating access for successful community college students. Some schools primarily accept students from other four-year schools, and these transfers may be fairly similar in overall profile to students admitted as “native” freshmen.</p>

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<p>Princeton doesn’t allow transfers, I think.</p>

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<p>Yea, Princeton doesn’t accept transfer students.</p>

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<p>hoedown,
For almost any of the California UCs and several other publics, the numbers of transfers are quite large. My comment was meant primarily as a reflection on the large absolute numbers that some schools are admitting as transfers and I also wonder about the academic strength of these students. While not disclosed anywhere that I know of, I suspect that the quality of these students lagged that of the FT/FY students who did attend X school. </p>

<p>Do you know of any data on the statistical profile of transfer students? Do you know how this group of students generally compares to the FT/FY admits?</p>

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<p>I think it would be difficult to compare them on a practical level, as once students enroll in a postsecondary institution, their college-level work is a better reflection of their “quality” than their secondary school records and test scores.</p>

<p>But if one were to stack them up for the purpose of comparison of their secondary-school profiles, on average I’d expect community college students to have weaker academic profiles. That’s because of the two big factors that might cause people to elect community colleges: socioeconomic factors (which are correlated with lower test scores, for example) and having a secondary school record that discouraged immediate admission to a 4-year school.</p>

<p>I don’t have statistics that compare the two groups on any one campus or nationally. I have some information from UCLA, which publishes a very nice undergraduate profile. In fall 2006, 92% of UCLA’s transfers came from California community colleges. New transfers had an average college GPA of 3.5, and were more likely than their “native” peers to have a first language other than English. They graduate at pretty similar rates.</p>

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<p>I agree that the cc experience of the transfer students is a better representation of those students at the time that they apply as transfers. Others have speculated (and I would probably agree) that the UCs escape the likely negative Selectivity ranking impact of their transfers as their Top 10% numbers would probably be lower as would their SAT scores. For the UCs, their transfers represent as much as 140% (UC Santa Barbara) of the size of the FT/FY entering class and as little as 74% (UC Berkeley). To a lesser extent this might also be true of the other Top 50 publics whose transfers range from a high of 38% (U Wisconsin and U Texas) to a low of 8% (Penn State).</p>