DS is finishing his freshman year at UCLA and has decided he isn’t happy and doesn’t want to go back. Spring quarter has been a disaster between a pretty significant illness, classes going online due to the protests, and now the TAs are striking. Socially things haven’t gone well either. Outside of doing well in his classes (until recently) he’s been floundering. His resume from this year is largely empty and he says he doesn’t know anyone well enough to ask for a LOR (and with the TAs striking won’t be able to get one from them anyways). His GPA was a 3.7 going into in the quarter, but he might earn his first C. HS GPA was a weighted 4.3, currently a history major, and we’re in VA.
The plan right now is for him to come home for the summer and take a 1 quarter leave of absence from UCLA in the fall (so he can’t take classes elsewhere and stay in good standing) while he applies for Spring 2025. If he needs more time that can be postponed until Fall 2025, but he’d have to drop out of UCLA, or go abroad in the spring to avoid going back to campus.
These are the things I think are important considerations:
School with onboarding and programming specifically for transfer students (Key need)
He would prefer to live on campus (I think this is pretty vital for him too)
Not too big (smaller than UCLA @ 34k), nor too small (under 3k)
Would prefer to avoid schools that rely heavily on TAs
Driveable from VA (at the moment DH and I want him closer to home, but we might flex on this for the right school)
Solid academic reputation, but have no desire for him to go somewhere that’s a grind or harder than where he is now
Ultimately he’ll need to own this decision, but I’d like to make some suggestions for places to consider that maybe weren’t on his radar before. If anyone has btdt I’d love to hear how it worked out for your DC.
That’s a pretty wide set of criteria. The experience one will have at say Williams or Amherst (both slightly smaller than desired) is very different than that of UCLA. Yet, he chose a school like UCLA for a reason. What was that? I only ask for fear of jumping too far in the other direction on the Goldilocks scale. Does he want big time athletics? Proximity to the coast? Anything else that can help narrow suggestions?
Is he interested in any of the other schools that offered him admission last year?
HS stats and UCLA GPA would be helpful, as well as likely majors.
If he is certain he wants to have transfer options, he will have to build a list that includes at least one affordable safety, same as he likely did last year.
Obvious ones nearby would include William&Mary, UVA, and American, plus (further away) Emory, depending on his final grades.
Vanderbilt is known for transfers but again may not be feasible depending on his final grades.
Many excellent colleges for history are small - from Gettysburg to URichmond to Kenyon to Hamilton, Vassar, or Washington&Lee (if he can get past the name).
One from Pomona, McKenna, Pitzer may work since all 5 colleges are contiguous and together form a 7,000 student campus, but it’d be far away.
You’d have to run the NPC on all of these, keeping in mind transfers tend to get less FA than freshmen. However, since he was attending UCLA from OOS, you may be full pay or able to pay 75k, which would make things more simple for him.
It’ll be hard to determine what his 2 safeties would be till he has his final grades, grades in history/English/social science, and a cumulative GPA.
I think he chose UCLA because he was so excited that he got in, wanted to branch out, and the bulk of his other acceptances were similar sized schools but not as highly ranked. He didn’t have as much success with mid-sized privates, mostly WLed.
He doesn’t truly care about big athletics outside of the fun it can provide the students to unite around an activity. He likes parties, but he also likes to go to movies, on hikes, play video games, etc.
There are no budget constraints.
Thank you for the suggestions. I’m hopeful he’ll reconsider W&M.
LA is a tough city to be, especially for an 18 year old living on their own for the first time. When I went there, I knew people who absolutely hated the place and couldn’t wait to leave. Some did transfer and/or dropped out but ones who stayed and graduated all ended up glad they stayed.
But if he does decide to transfer an need a letter, just have him pick a class that he got an A in, make an appointment with the Professor. 100% they will wrte him the letter. Just prepare a personal statement/transcript/resume.
I have gotten letters from professors whom I have never interacted, didn’t think they will write letters, but at a place like UCLA, prof’s are open to writing student letters, even if the student doesn’t feel close/personal to them. I have had two professors write me letters 10 years after I graduated, all I did was email them and asked. I assume their letters were awesome because I got into the programs I applied for.
I had a HS class of 2021 student leave UCLA after one year and every single prof declined to write a letter because they didn’t know him (student had 2 quarters of straight As at the point they submitted transfer apps).
Ultimately a TA wrote an LoR but this student had to clear that with the transfer AO at each of his target schools.
It was a stressful situation for this student, who did have good transfer admission results. Maybe the TA strike will be over before OP’s kid has to submit apps.
Shocking to me because UCLA is known to be a pre-professional school factory where profs are known to write letters for students and my own experience getting letters was nothing less than amazing.
Pitt. I do think Va has so many great schools. Even a CNU and JMU. For no TAs, you likely need small. But you’d have to look school by school. And those schools might be less likely to have protests.
Not sure about onboarding transfers but could another option be leave UCLA as he doesn’t want to go back, do a year at community college starting in Fall and transfer in that sort of pathway ?
UDel is another public with much love.
You never know where protests will rise and it’s unfortunate but hopefully he’ll get involved on campus at the next school. It is certainly tough to take those steps, especially after such a tough year.
This is what I’m concerned about. The TAs lead the discussion groups so they are the ones DS knows best. Fingers crossed he’ll have luck like the pp did.
What about University of Richmond? Seems like it would be a lateral transfer academically, students live on campus, close by. They have just a hair under 3000 students. Wake Forest might also be good to look at. Also within driving distance, wonder how he might feel about Emory.
Seconding the Virginia publics, and also would suggest considering Richard Bland as a safety, at which he could complete his second year and then transfer to William & Mary, UVA, etc. Additionally, Virginia Tech, VCU, and George Mason were all spotlighted on this page about transfer student success programs.
Another nearby option that was noted for its transferring programs is American (source). Within driving distance, Appalachian State has also been noted for its transfer support program (source).
Saint Joseph’s in Philadelphia has a reputation for being a welcoming environment for transfer students.
Some other schools that have a reputation for having more transfers (or higher transfer acceptance rates) are BU, Emory, UNC - Chapel Hill (though I don’t know how many of their acceptances are from NC community colleges with agreements).
This site has transfer acceptance rates for a number of the Top X colleges. I’m not sure what you consider “driving distance”, but Northwestern, Notre Dame, and Vanderbilt could potentially fall within a long day’s drive.
Regarding LoRs, do many colleges that the student may be interested in use LoRs for transfer applicants? It does not look like UVA and W&M mention LoRs for transfer applicants, for example.
I also wanted to extend my sympathy to your son with regard to the grad student strikes. My older daughter just graduated from a university that experienced a lot of strikes (two grad student strikes, one lecturer strike, RA strike, food services strike…) during her four years there. Whether the motivations are reasonable or not, the strikes are incredibly disruptive, especially for underclassmen.
These are kids who have experienced a lot of uncertainty since covid, and the strikes often add a new layer of instability. The strikes definitely made an already difficult freshman year even harder for my daughter. That said, she has become so much more resilient than she likely ever would have been because of these experiences. I’m not trying to influence his transfer decision at all – although doing well, she still has some mental health scars and I would never feel qualified to judge another situation to know what is best. For her, though, returning to school ended up being the right move and she is happy she did.
Thank you. There is a part of me that wonders if he’ll reconsider after a quarter break and exploring other options which is why I think taking a leave is a wiser move than dropping out.
Re. the LoRs, can’t recall who off the top of my head, but a couple of the schools I’ve looked at required them. Vanderbilt being one of them.
Thank you all for the school suggestions. Does anyone have any thoughts on Vassar?
Very good for history and always interested in male applicants, which is partly why I’d listed it originally. However, same caveat as for Vanderbilt etc, it’ll really depend on his History/Humanities grades and his GPA. If he got several Cs this term it will be a problem, if he maintains his A- GPA he has a shot (reach for all transfer hopefuls alas).
Closer to you, Davidson also is strong for history.