Transferring to an Ivy League University

Transferring to an Ivy League school is even more difficult than being accepted as a freshman applicant. For students who aspire to attend Princeton, for example, it hasn’t even been possible to transfer to the school in recent decades. The university recently announced that in 2018 it will offer admission to a small number of transfer students as part of the university’s strategic plan to seek greater diversity.

“Princeton is planning for the reinstatement of a small transfer admissions program as a way to attract students with diverse backgrounds and experiences, such as military veterans and students from low-income backgrounds, including some who began their studies at community colleges,” the university announced earlier this year.

In an important recent development for students who may be planning to transfer, the Common Application organization has announced plans for a new application specially customized for transfer students. Jenny Rickard, the Common App’s chief executive, said that the move to a special application for transferees would help “a very important but under-recognized group of learners . . . by actually acknowledging their diverse backgrounds and experiences.”

At this time, transfer students complete only about 4% of the total applications that are submitted through the Common App platform. The new transfer application will allow transfer students to apply to multiple schools with the new special-purpose application and will also waive certain fees.

IvySelect college admissions counselors take pride in their ability to help high school students applying to college as freshman applicants to construct a target list of 12 or 13 schools of which even the schools at the bottom of the list are attractive to the student. We develop the list so that the student will be happy to attend any of the target schools, not just the ones at the top of the list. However, if a student didn’t use IvySelect initially or if they didn’t anticipate how much they would dislike, say, cold weather, large class sizes, a rural setting or any of the other features of the college they’re attending, then IvySelect is highly qualified to offer expert assistance in transferring to a more desirable school.

There are other reasons why a student may prefer to transfer aside from those characteristics of their current school that they dislike (which go unmentioned in the transfer application to avoid being perceived as a malcontent). A student may be seeking to attend a college from which they were previously rejected or which offers a more challenging educational experience. IvySelect will work with the student to distill a compelling message that clarifies the reasons that your current school doesn’t meet your academic needs and why the transfer school is a better fit.

Some students seek to transfer so that they can participate in specific programs that aren’t offered at their current college or are offered at a much higher quality and breadth at the transfer school. This rationale offers the most frequently successful case for acceptance as a transfer student. IvySelect enables you to articulate this rationale so that the admissions office will view your transfer application positively.

Again, we emphasize that students hoping to secure a spot at a top-tier university face even tougher odds as transfer students than they do as freshman applicants, as seen in the Table below from The Washington Post. The columns show the top national universities listed according to their US News & World Report rankings, the number of transferees entering in a recent year, the number of new freshmen, the total of newly admitted students, and the percentage share of transfers in the total. Schools that do not permit or report transfers are omitted.

Note that, among Ivy League schools, Cornell accepts the largest share of transfer students at 15% and Harvard and Dartmouth the lowest at 1%. Princeton is not shown because their new transfer program won’t begin until next year. The seven branches on the University of California on the list accept a remarkably high average of 33% of students who apply as transferees, due mainly to their commitment to the State’s community colleges.

Table: Transfer Students as a Percent of Total Admissions at Top-Tier Schools

SCHOOL	TRANSFERS	FRESHMEN	TOTAL	TRANSFER % OF TOTAL
Harvard University	12	1659	1671	1%
Yale University	29	1360	1389	2%
Stanford University	29	1678	1707	2%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	16	1043	1059	2%
Duke University	13	1721	1734	1%
University of Pennsylvania	150	2425	2575	6%
California Institute of Technology	3	226	229	1%
Johns Hopkins University	40	1414	1454	3%
Dartmouth College	14	1152	1166	1%
Northwestern University	55	2005	2060	3%
Brown University	51	1561	1612	3%
Cornell University	554	3225	3779	15%
Vanderbilt University	207	1605	1812	11%
Washington University in St. Louis	110	1734	1844	6%
Rice University	31	949	980	3%
University of Notre Dame	118	2011	2129	6%
University of California-Berkeley	2187	5466	7653	29%
Emory University	105	1365	1470	7%
Georgetown University	148	1578	1726	9%
Carnegie Mellon University	20	1474	1494	1%
University of California-Los Angeles	3167	5764	8931	35%
University of Southern California	1435	3098	4533	32%
University of Virginia	665	3709	4374	15%
Tufts University	22	1348	1370	2%
Wake Forest University	30	1287	1317	2%
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor	1041	6505	7546	14%
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill	886	3976	4862	18%
New York University	854	5913	6767	13%
Brandeis University	60	859	919	7%
College of William and Mary	157	1511	1668	9%
Georgia Institute of Technology	499	2809	3308	15%
Case Western Reserve University	38	1282	1320	3%
University of California-Santa Barbara	1592	4747	6339	25%
University of California-Irvine	2024	5424	7448	27%
University of California-San Diego	2461	4921	7382	33%
Boston University	478	3915	4393	11%
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute	121	1331	1452	8%
Tulane University	116	1647	1763	7%
University of California-Davis	3138	5377	8515	37%
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign	1331	6937	8268	16%
University of Wisconsin-Madison	770	6264	7034	11%
Lehigh University	29	1299	1328	2%
Northeastern University	460	2944	3404	14%
Pennsylvania State University	425	8183	8608	5%
University of Florida	1968	6537	8505	23%
University of Miami	592	2076	2668	22%
Ohio State University	2606	7079	9685	27%
Pepperdine University	106	656	762	14%
University of Texas-Austin	2325	7285	9610	24%
University of Washington	1730	6360	8090	21%
Yeshiva University	31	809	840	4%
George Washington University	492	2416	2908	17%
University of Connecticut	805	3588	4393	18%
University of Maryland at College Park	2004	4129	6133	33%
Worcester Polytechnic Institute	42	1056	1098	4%
Clemson University	1293	3475	4768	27%
Purdue University-West Lafayette	586	6372	6958	8%
Southern Methodist University	287	1459	1746	16%
University of Georgia	1116	5261	6377	18%
Brigham Young University-Provo	734	4072	4806	15%
Fordham University	343	2258	2601	13%
University of Pittsburgh	762	3847	4609	17%
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities	2175	5530	7705	28%
Texas A&M University-College Station	2525	10835	13360	19%
Virginia Tech	958	5494	6452	15%
American University	287	1787	2074	14%
Baylor University	454	3625	4079	11%
Rutgers-New Brunswick	2541	6412	8953	28%
Clark University	52	547	599	9%
Colorado School of Mines	159	999	1158	14%
Indiana University-Bloomington	912	7716	8628	11%
Michigan State University	1668	8055	9723	17%
University of Delaware	426	4179	4605	9%
University of Massachusetts-Amherst	1158	4642	5800	20%