Right now I attend a Top 25 US News university, and I was wondering if the ranking and prestige of my current school will help my chances at transferring to an Ivy League school or another top university. Assuming I have the grades, extracurriculars, and recommendations, will I have a better chance at transferring than the average student?
Quite possibly.
Here is what you should know-- the seats at Ivy-plus schools that are available for transfers is largely tied to attrition. Since attrition is almost non-existent in the top Ivy schools, so are the seats available. By way of example, recently, Harvard had over 1500 applicants and admitted about 15, and Yale had over a 1000 applicants in which about 2 dozen were offered seats. So, while being qualified is certainly a criteria, the other portion must convey why these schools; typical reasons are that these schools offer programs and/or degrees not offered at your existing institution.
Second, that you could have obtained admission as a freshmen applicant. Third, that you have perfect scores at your current institution. Long story short…it is much more difficult to obtain admission as a transfer than as applying for a freshmen seat…
Truthfully, I don’t expect to be admitted to Harvard or Yale, but the prospect of going there is just so alluring that I have to apply. Unfortunately, the main reason why I am applying to those schools is so I can be closer to home, not because they offer a degree that my university doesn’t. Still, I think that I can offer a good reason for transferring in my essays, so that should be fine. I was rejected by both schools when I applied as a freshman, but I heard that past rejections don’t affect your transfer application, and my stats were definitely good enough for Harvard and Yale.
Basically my main goal is to find a good school closer to home. It doesn’t have to be an Ivy League, and I would be fine with something like UChicago, Carnegie Mellon, or Swarthmore. Those schools will probably be hard to transfer into as well, but I’m hoping that if I get good grades at my already great university, my chances will go up.
Hmmm, UofC and CMU are near the difficulty of Ivy schools to make transfer, respectively, 5% and10% transfer admissions. Here is a list, albeit several years olds, of transfer rates at the top schools, see:http://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/stats/transfer-acceptance-rates/#.Vf9FNEr3arU
The link you provided isn’t working for me, but I did find a list of transfer rates from the year 2012, and it looks like you’re right. UChicago’s is around 2% while Carnegie Mellon’s is around 10%, which doesn’t look good for me. Hopefully I’ll have an advantage due to my current university, but I’ll have to see how my grades are before I make any assumptions.
For Ivy plus schools, and this certainly doesn’t seem fair, but the largest percentage of transfer students are from other Ivy plus schools. Best to you…