Colorado College is a small, liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Can’t believe we just had to say Colorado three times in one sentence. Anyways, CC (that’s what we’re calling it) is known for their super unique Block Plan, where you take one class at a time for about eight weeks. Pretty neat!
How to Transfer to Claremont McKenna
Claremont McKenna College is a small liberal arts school located in Claremont, California, and it’s a part of the Claremont Colleges – a unique consortium of 5 undergrad colleges that share resources and a campus, but each has its own focus. Claremont McKenna is known for their programs on business, finance, government, econ, public affairs, and international relations, and is also slightly more conservative than their fellow Claremont College associates.
How to Transfer to Bryn Mawr
Bryn Mawr College is a women’s liberal arts school located in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. It’s a small school, with only around 1400 undergrads and 350 postgrads. They’re a part of the Seven Sisters, and they share a school paper with Haverford! They’re known for being politically super progressive and hella feminist – they were the first college in the US to offer a PhD in social work (and doctorates to women in general), they were one of the first women’s colleges to accept trans and non-binary applicants, and they renamed May Day as “May Hole” because maypole was too phallic. If this sounds like your jam, you might be considering applying as a transfer.
How to Transfer to Amherst
Amherst College is a small liberal arts school located smack dab in the middle of Massachusetts. Amherst (the town) is peak college town vibes, with Amherst College, UMass Amherst, and Hampshire College all packed into 27 square miles. In addition to Amherst classes, students can take classes at UMass Amherst, Hampshire, or the nearby Smith College and Mount Holyoke College. Amherst is known for a totally open curriculum – no core classes to mess with. They’re also known for having an academic culture in line with the Ivy League, and they have the admissions stats to back it. In 2022, Amherst’s acceptance rate was 7.25%, and their transfer acceptance rate was 6%. To put it more plainly, 503 people applied to transfer to Amherst in 2022, and only 30 were admitted.
How to Transfer to Barnard
Barnard College is a women’s liberal arts school located in NYC, as one of the colleges contained within Columbia University. So, it’s not Columbia, but it’s not not Columbia. But your degree does say Columbia on it. It’s a whole thing. It’s small, with less than 4,000 undergrads, but you share resources, sports teams, Greek life, libraries, and dining halls with all the Columbia undergrads too. You can also take classes at Julliard!
How to Transfer to Bowdoin
Bowdoin College is a small (less than 2k people small), liberal arts school located in Brunswick, Maine. They’re known for their poli sci and econ programs, as well as some STEM majors like biology, biochem, and neuroscience. They’re a great school if you’re looking for that classic, well-rounded liberal arts education to supplement more analytical majors. Doctors and scientists need to know history and how to write too, ya know!
Transfer Extracurricular Club Strategies
Given that you’re reading this post, we’re going to assume that you are thinking of transferring colleges. While transferring to a different college isn’t a ‘big deal’ — it’s fairly common and we help many students navigate the process — orchestrating a ‘successful’ transfer does require significant planning. We should also explain what we mean by ‘successful.’ Most of the students we work with want to transfer to a college that they either didn’t get into when they applied to colleges as a high school senior, or that didn’t even seem like a possibility, so they hadn’t tried to apply. This means that they need to be a better applicant than they were as few as 10 months earlier. And a least three of those months were summer break. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to improve your application, so this whole process takes some strategy if you want the best possible outcomes.
Transferring to Vanderbilt 2023
Vanderbilt is ranked at #13 in the country for National Universities, and is an enormously popular school for students who want a combination of top-tier academics and a pretty raucous social life. All undergraduate students at Vanderbilt are required to live on campus — including transfers — and Greek life places a huge role. Around 20% of students are involved in Greek life, and more are in its orbit through events, fundraisers, and parties.
Transferring to The University of Michigan 2023
The University of Michigan is a top university in the United States and has a strong transfer program that attracts students from around the country. Unlike many other top schools, UMich has a robust transfer support ecosystem, including community college student support programs, that ensures that transfer students feel supported. The results are obvious, as over .
Transferring to The University of Chicago 2023
Transferring to New York University (NYU) 2023
Have you been dreaming of living in New York? Transferring to NYU can give you access to everything New York City has to offer, while at one of the most well-known and well-respected colleges in the country. NYU definitely has the cool factor as far as colleges go. 91̽ to more young celebrities and influencers than we care to count, we’ve found that a rising number of students are looking to NYU as a transfer option because it offers the opportunity to build their career outside of academia parallel to earning their degree. Like with many transfer programs, though, housing is not guaranteed. If you’re looking to transfer to NYU, you may also have to accept the reality of being young and hustling in New York City — numerous roommates in tiny apartments included.
Transferring to Stanford 2023
When one of our students gets into Stanford, it rarely surprises us. Before we agree to help a student apply to Stanford, we make sure it’s possible that they could get in. With a minuscule regular first-year acceptance rate below 5%, we don’t want stressed-out teenagers wasting their time. If we’re working with a student on a Stanford application, it’s because they are genuinely qualified to get in — which is to say, profoundly exceptional.
Transferring to Duke University 2023
Duke has a reputation as an Ivy League-caliber university outside of the East Coast. The students at Duke are some of the best of the best, and what was once a backup option for the top high school students in the country has become a stretch for even the best and the brightest. We’ve talked a lot about how the whole idea of “transferring up” is a bit of a fallacy, and Duke offers the perfect example of why trying to leverage a year of college into an aggressive transfer isn’t panning out like it used to. It all comes down to numbers.
Transferring to Dartmouth 2023
Up to a third of college students transfer during their collegiate careers, including moving from two-year colleges to four-year colleges. The transfer path is well-trod, and it can be the perfect option for a student who isn’t getting what they need academically, or even socially, from their current school. One of the great myths of transferring, however, is that it is a reliable back door into top-tier institutions. “If you didn’t get in the first time, try again a year later,” is — to be blunt — bad advice. And yet every year we are contacted by hundreds of students (and their parents) who think that now may be little Tommy’s time to get into Dartmouth.
Transferring to Columbia University 2023
There is a pervasive myth in the world of transferring that if you couldn’t get in a college as a first-year, you can wait a year or two and have a better chance as a transfer. This can be true for some schools — especially small and medium-sized liberal arts schools — but it isn’t true for most of the top schools in the United States. Despite the fact the statistics rarely work out in favor of the idea that transferring is a back door into the best schools in the country, we’re constantly contacted by students (and their parents) who think that while the Ivy League wasn’t an option when they were a high school senior, it may be an option with some college under their belts.
Transferring to Princeton 2023
In 2022, Princeton the expansion of their transfer program after years of declining transfer acceptance rates. This is an especially big deal because Princeton paused all transfer programs from 1990 through 2018. Yes. You read that right. For nearly 30 years, Princeton didn’t accept any transfer students — you couldn’t even apply if you wanted to try for the impossible. Now, instead of accepting only a handful of transfer students, they’d accept up to 35.
Transferring to UPenn 2023
In 2021, the transfer acceptance rate at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) dropped to . Of the more than 3,500 applicants who applied to transfer, only around 165, or 5%, of students were accepted. While the drop did signify a record, it was part of an ongoing trend and not an anomaly — so we don’t expect to see a rise in the future. It’s only going to be increasingly difficult to get into Penn as a transfer, and Penn isn’t unique in that. The Penn transfer acceptance rate is twice that of fellow Ivy League members Harvard and Princeton. As a result, “.”
Transferring to Harvard 2023
Transferring to Cornell 2023
Cornell is a member of the elite Ivy League with a trait all its own: a culture and tradition of bringing in transfer students. Whereas Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, and the rest of the Ivy League accept as few as a handful of transfers each year, Cornell welcomes 500-600 transfers annually. Transfers are accepted for fall or spring starts (another very rare opportunity at such an elite school), and are from diverse backgrounds including community colleges and two-year schools.
Transferring to Brown 2023
Brown that the transfers they admit “are people who are unwilling to settle.” We like that characterization. If you are going to try to transfer into the Ivy League, you need to have the gumption to believe you deserve to be at one of the best schools in the country — and the essays, grades, , and extracurriculars to back it up.