We want to start this post by drawing an important distinction that is often overlooked: going to a community college or state school for two years and then transferring to a top tier school doesn work. That system can work if youre transferring from a satellite campus to a main campus, but won get you from Temple to Penn. Here why:
Top tier schools have very high retention rates, so when theyre looking at a transfer applicant pool, theyre only replacing the 2-3% of students that left. They technically don have to admit anyone, and theyre not admitting transfer students just because they have a stand out application.
In other words, transfer acceptance rates are low because retention rates at top schools, especially Ivy League schools, are high. What admissions counselors are looking for (and how many students theyll accept) is different every year because it a direct function of both their retention rate and filing any holes they see.
Transfer Acceptance Rates:
Weve compiled a chart with transfer acceptance rates from top schools since 2014. The years at the top refer to the admission cycle year: so the percentages under 2014/15 refers to the class of 2019, 2015/16 refers to the class of 2020, 2016/17 refers to the class of 2021, and 2017/18 refers to the class of 2022.
A note on a few statistics:
Cornell is clearly the outlier here with a transfer admit rate that far surpasses the rest. It the most transfer friendly of the Ivy by far.
Princeton didn accept transfer students until last year.
Brown usual 5% rose to 9% for the class of 2020, which is likely due to an unusual dip in retention rate that year.
For reference, here are the regular admission rates for the same schools:
Outside of Cornell, youll see that transfer acceptance rates are even lower in every case. If there one major takeaway from this post, it should be that transferring into a top tiered school after two years shouldn be part of your application strategy. Not everyone needs to attend an Ivy League, and these statistics will hopefully serve as a look into how difficult it is to get in. This isn to say that transferring isn an option, but you should consider where youre applying and manage expectations from the start.
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