Transfer Student QuestionAnswered
If I'm planning on transferring colleges at the end of my freshman year of college and entering a new school in fall of 2024. In high school I did not do the best, and I know that since I'm transferring after only my freshman year, the college i apply to will most likely look at my high school transcripts. What are some ways I can stand out as a transfer student, and help them look past my poor high school years? Also, do I retake the SAT/ACT? thanks!
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2 answers
Hi @paigeabc123!
When you apply for transfer admission, you'll have Fall 2023 grades from your college. Apart from that, the most important things will be a compelling reason for transferring and good recommendation letters. Also, make sure you have transferable coursework.
Hope this helps!
If you are a Freshman to Sophomore transfer, then the college will look at your entire HS transcript, ECs, Test Scores, etc, plus your Freshman year grades. If you didn't do well on your SAT/ACT, then I highly recommend that you use this summer vacation and grind on that to improve your score to a level commensurate with the 25%-75% percentile range for admitted students of the school to which you are applying to. So let's say you have a 1220 and the 25/75 for the transfer school is 1430-1550, or a 31 to 35 ACT, then your target SAT/ACT should be in that range.
The problem with transferring after 1 semester of college work is that you still have 4 years of past history to defend. So let's say you had a 3.3 GPA and you apply to a school in Feb or March, the college has only 1 semester of actual grades to determine if you have vastly improved or not. Let's say you get a perfect 4.0 GPA, that is compelling however the college will evaluate the course rigor based on the college you attend. So transferring out of community college with 1 semester of grades is different that transferring out of NYU or USC with 1 semester of grades.
Therefore it's very important to have a strategy in place that supports and rewards transfer students. If I didn't get into my college of choice, I'd probably look for a University that has a popular auto-admit transfer program in place so I know I'll be admitted if I do well and won't waste my time. For example, if you attend Santa Monica Community College, and kill it for 2 years, you get auto-admitted into UCLA is you have a 3.6 GPA and fulfilled the AA degree requirements. That's an amazing deal because you end up with a College Diploma from a top 20 school that has an 8.5% normal acceptance rate.
If you don't do this, then do your transfer research this summer and look at all the common data sets for the colleges on your list in Section D. Transfer Applications. Some schools are ridiculously difficult to transfer into like Yale, Duke, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, MIT, and Caltech, actually, it's 3 times harder than applying as first-time applicants. Other schools like UC schools and UT schools are easier to transfer into.
It's far easier to transfer to a better college if you have really achieved something notable after 2 years than 1 year.
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