<p>The amount of places any school has available to offer to transfers is based on how many students are leaving the school at any given time, leaving dorm and classroom vacancies. To answer your suggestion directly, it does NOT depend on freshman yield, since if there are too few freshman enrollments the spring before the year starts, the school will dip into their waitlist instead of leaving the seats empty for whole next year (and losing all the tuition). The college buzzword used instead is “retention” - if a school has a lot of people dropping out, transferring out, or even going abroad with an intention to return to the school later, their retention is low and they’ll have more room for transfers. At Chicago and Ivies, the retention is usually high.</p>
<p>It’s difficult for admissions to estimate how many places will be open for transfer students applying to start their sophomore years at the university because they don’t know how many freshman will transfer out (the processes at all schools are simultaneous). That’s why vacant spots run on a lag and it can be better to apply for transfer when you’re one is a sophomore who would start his or her junior year at the place he or she applied.</p>
<p>Spending more time at your original college also gives you more time to build an impressive college transcript. If you apply as a freshman to start at the other school your senior year, they’ll only have your freshman first semester grades, and will de facto have to weigh all of your high school stats more heavily, because they just have less new information. Since these stats were what got you rejected the first time around (and because your spring isn’t going so well), you probably want to deemphasize them/dilute their relative importance by waiting to apply until you have more positive credentials under your belt.</p>
<p>MeIsHM is right that you should pick a place you like this year and psychologically prepare yourself for the possibility that you might spend 4 years there even if you ATTEMPT to transfer. Here is a list of the transfer acceptance rates at various schools; Chicago’s this year was 2.1%:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1456285-uchicago-2012-transfer-admit-rate-2-1-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1456285-uchicago-2012-transfer-admit-rate-2-1-a.html</a></p>
<p>Some places will appreciate your going to an undergraduate institution closer to their level more than others - I know a lot of people who’ve had good luck transferring to Columbia from other colleges that were only a step down (Wellesley, JHU), but also some how have transferred from community college to the top tier.</p>