Is it a good idea to go to a college for one year and then attempt to transfer?

Answered

If you are worried particularly about having to stay and be embarrassed about trying to transfer out, here are a few tips that might help:

1. You do not have to tell your classmates. Seriously, the only people that absolutely need to know are your guidance counselor and a few teachers who will be writing your rec letters. The guidance counselor will likely not be that difficult to manage, since they are probably used to transfer students and it is their job to stay professional, plus many colleges have the option to change counselors if they do start acting strange after you try to transfer. The teachers are a lot easier: many will simply not care, but if you think they do or might threaten your grades because of it, you can always not take any more classes with the ones you previously asked for recs. That easy.

2. You can always try again. As far as I know, although it depends on the policy of the college you are trying to transfer into, you can apply every semester, which means many more than one opportunities.

3. Although your chances of entrance as a transfer student will differ school to school, you can ensure that you will not be stuck in this college by applying to multiple institutions, so that worst case scenario: you get into one and transfer there; best case scenario: you get into a few and chose the best one/the one most to your liking.

Whichever route you take, please be sure to do your research on transfer policies and create an adequate college list using calculators like the one on College Vine to estimate your chances to ensure you will not be "stuck," for instance, you will need at least four 50% chance schools to be relatively sure you will get into one. But college admissions are such a gamble, so I would advise more than that.

Good luck and I hope this helped.