Transferring and Scholarships

slik_nik
Sat, 02 Oct 2010 22:16:13 +0000

@ heinochus: You probably won’t get the scholarship back if it was merit-based. Rice offers merit-based scholarships mainly to lure students from picking one of the peer schools (schools like the Ivies, Stanford, Duke, UChicago, Northwestern, WashU, etc.). If you apply as a transfer, they know you want to go to Rice, and they don’t need to offer the scholarship to lure you in. Once you turned down the admission offer to Rice, you also turned down the scholarship offer. Nevertheless, you can always try explaining your situation to financial aid if you apply as a transfer and fight hard to get the scholarship back. But don’t think that an admission to Rice is guaranteed just because you got in the first time… you will have to go through the entire process all over again unfortunately. Nevertheless, if you have a solid reason to attend Rice, they will likely I accept you… I met many transfers during my freshman year who got into Rice as high school seniors, decided to attend elsewhere, and then applied again to Rice and got in.

Also, I was in a similar situation last year, and I was having second thoughts about not going to Duke. I suggest making the most of your situation at Chicago this semester and not think about it until winter break. Don’t let the idea of Rice even enter your head until winter break. If you still feel you want to do engineering or like Rice better during winter break, then you can start the transfer application. I actually ended up transferring to Duke so I could study environmental science, which was available but weak at Rice. Duke just offers many more academic resources in the discipline I’m interested in. However, I do wish I kept more of an open mind my first semester at Rice because I was always thinking about Duke… that’s the biggest regret I have. Maybe if I didn’t think about Duke at all, the thought of transferring would have never entered my head, even though I ultimately chose to leave for program reasons. I don’t regret transferring (I do love it here at Duke), but I do regret not keeping a more open mind to Rice (I finally opened my mind to Rice in April, which was too late). Best of luck man… don’t think about Rice until winter break. What’s done is done… no regrets. Embrace Chicago until its time to reflect on your 1st semester!