<p>I’m currently a freshman at Cornell in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Cornell is great, but I’m finding that I’m not liking the pre-professional aspect of my program or the frat dominated social scene of Cornell. I also think I discovered that Chicago was my dream school after I was accepted ED at Cornell (I was also accepted EA to Chicago). If I finish this semester with about a 3.7 with a fairly rigorous schedule, what do you think my chances would be to transfer into Chicago for Fall 2011? Comments and opinions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.</p>
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<li><p>I have nothing even remotely scientific on this, but I think your story is a version of a story that’s pretty common among successful transfer applicants (everywhere, not just at Chicago). Chicago still accepts transfers, so you likely have a decent shot at it.</p></li>
<li><p>Think, however, about what you are doing: You may not get Core credit for anything, and most of your ILR courses aren’t going to translate to any major at Chicago. So you could easily lose a full year by transferring, or put yourself in a position where you would never be able to take an elective in order to avoid taking 5 years to graduate. That’s expensive.</p></li>
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<p>Cornell is a wonderful, diverse place with a great faculty. While you are thinking about transferring, you should also be exploring the many things you could do at Cornell to make your experience there more Chicago-like (or, more importantly, more YOU-like, now that you understand your own tastes better).</p>
<p>Along those lines, the “frat dominated social scene” changes dramatically once you are past freshman year and have chosen to not be in a frat. My daughter is there now, has nothing to do with the Greek scene whatsoever and is having a great time there. Most people there are not in frats. And if a liberal arts curriculum id the issue, there is CAS right there.</p>
<p>But then again, if you don’t see the social thing working out for you there, for whatever reason, you certainly don’t need to stay. Ditto if you really crave the Core curriculum, or Chicago.</p>
<p>I am an unabashed Chicago cheerleader here since my son is SO happy and thriving beyond anything I hoped for. But, still, I dunno… It’s one thing if you are a bleeding heart gay liberal atheist at the Liberty University, and realize that you need to be at somewhere else just to keep your sanity. But, it’s entirely another thing to be at a school as good and as big as Cornell. Surely, you can find groups and associations of like minded young people. It’s just seem to be a lot of overhead of starting all over again in another school. </p>
<p>But then again, maybe I am naive. S told me about a very close friend in another top 10 school and said, this friend is very lonely since he still has not found a group of kids like him with whom he can have a thoughtful, intellectual discussion on a lot of things he cares about. My S on the other hand has no problem finding other students with whom he can indulge in all sort of esoteric philosophical discussions. </p>
<p>I guess you can apply for transfer, and meanwhile do your best to find a community of liked minded people at Cornell. If you find the community, then stay put, and turn down the transfer acceptance. If the spring is coming to an end, and you really feel that you belong elsewhere, you have the option of packing up. At least you will have given a full year’s worth of consideration to Cornell.</p>
<p>A few more thoughts:</p>
<p>1) Not liking the ILR curriculum/ courses is perfectly valid, but you might want to check whether you will be dealing with this issue to the same degree for the remainder of your program there. It could be the case that you are enduring the “worst” of it (from your perspective) this year, and going forward you would be experiencing substantial proportion of electives, and required courses that you like better than these. I don’t know that this is the case but you might want to look into it. Unless of course you’ve already decided that staying put is not an option.</p>
<p>2) “…most of your ILR courses aren’t going to translate to any major at Chicago”
I have no idea if this is the case or not, but it may not be, you might want to find out.</p>
<p>3) “Surely, you can find groups and associations of like minded young people.”
Surely you can find like-minded people, they are there. However that does not guarantee that you will. As they are interspersed there among the non-like minded people. Diversity has its good points, but also its less good points.</p>
<p>The challenge there is to find them. It is easy when they happen to wind up living on your floor in your dorm, but by chance this may not happen. In which case you need to proactively invest some effort into finding them. And it is possible not to find them.</p>
<p>An environment where everyone there is more homogeneously just like you makes it more probable that you will find a group of like-minded fellow-travelers. This is the social attraction of LACs. Ironically D1 folllowed this approach and it did not work out for her, at her LAC. She, and they, were not who she expected after all. But that’s another matter…</p>
<p>The “effort” involves joining stuff, doing stuff that you like. Which you should be doing anyway, to be happier there. I guess probably that’s what hyeonjlee meant.</p>
<p>I agree with most of the above comments. But if Chicago is your target, you still have the second semester at Cornell to adjust your courses aiming the “core” of Chicago’s requirements. At least, you will be able to save some $30K worth of credits. Should you decide not to transfer afterall, you still have nothing to lose.</p>
<p>It’s my understanding that UChicago is a REALLY different school than Cornell. I see no reason why posters are encouraging OP to stay at Cornell? UChicago is in a major city, plus it’s much smaller than Cornell, right? </p>
<p>Both are very expensive, so you should of course think about any financial burden transferring may cause. But it should be easy enough to chart out your four year plan and see if you can still graduate on time.</p>
<p>In this case, the size of the schools, or their cities, were not cited by the OP as being his/her particular critical issues, as it happens, so the posters did not base their advice on these particular differences. Rather they voiced their views based on the factors that the OP did cite.</p>