Transferring from Baruch to NYU or Columbia?

juillet
Fri, 14 Mar 2014 04:40:26 +0000

Are you considering Baruch for two years for the cost considerations? It is true that Baruch is quite a bit cheaper than Stern, even for OOS students.

However, transferring into competitive schools like Columbia and NYU Stern is even harder than getting in for freshman admission. Columbia says that their transfer admission rate is somewhere around 1-4%. That’s because very few students leave Columbia once they are in, so they don’t have as many slots for people to transfer in. Also, in my experience, Columbia transfer students tend to have gone to comparable universities/colleges for their first two years and transferred for fit reasons. (I used to supervise a residence hall that was mostly transfer students.) NYU doesn’t state these statistics but I would imagine it’s similar given how popular Stern is as a choice for business. They do say, however, that transfer admission is highly competitive and that students who are successful show “extraordinary” achievements in high school and college.

Besides, your best financial aid (at least for Columbia, and likely for NYU) is when you apply as a freshman. I don’t know that Columbia meets 100% need for transfer students, but they do for undergraduate freshmen - so if you come from a middle-class family the final cost for Columbia can be less than what it might cost for you to go to Baruch, which is very unlikely to offer you any financial aid unless you get a scholarship (and the total OOS cost of Baruch is likely to be around $30-35,000/year).

I don’t know much about NYU Stern, but Columbia considers both your high school and college record when you transfer. Also, unlike many schools, Columbia requires standardized test scores from transfer applicants, too. They will look for a person who was competitive for admission to Columbia out of high school - including the high SAT/ACT scores and grades, plus extracurriculars. But in addition, you need to have been an extraordinary student on the college level, too. You should maintain a 3.5+ (I think Stanford, who has a comparable transfer policy, says their transfers average around a 3.8) and get involved on campus in a way that lets Columbia know you will also be an involved, engaged student at their school, too. In addition, in the admission essay Columbia is looking for evidence that you are looking to transfer because you think Columbia is a better fit for you than your current school. That’s what distinguishes the qualified applicants who do get in from the qualified applicants that don’t - an ability to articulate, compelling, WHY they want to go to Columbia (other than the fact that it’s a great school).

NYU probably has similar requirements.