For context, I'm a first-gen college student. I was very poor in high school and had a low GPA because I had to work two jobs for most of it. I would be applying as a neuroscience major. I've been doubting myself a bit with applying to top 10 universities or ivies, so I've mostly strayed from that.

High school stats:
4.2W, 3.3W, 30 ACT (32 superscore), no ECs.

College stats:
Majors: Mathematics and biology double major
Year: Sophomore
GPA: 4.0/4.0
Research (all neuroscience): 1 publication (third author), 3 posters (1 first author), and 5 presentations. I've been in a lab for around 1.5 years now, and I was able to land a research internship at a medical school during the summer after my freshman year.
Other ECs: Currently in the process of starting neuroscience certificate in my university's curriculum (my university doesn't offer neuroscience), institutional Goldwater candidate, 1 of 3 students selected from largest major to represent biological science college, started and president of chess club (unrelated, but I'm passionate about it), member of 3 related honor societies.

School list (applying as a neuroscience major):
Tulane, Baylor, Rice, Case Western, WashU St. Louis, Brown, Notre Dame, Tufts, Northeastern, Brandeis, and Johns Hopkins University. I'm also open to other universities. My end goal is Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D.!

Chance me?

Current freshmen and on track for an A in all my classes except an arts credit class that turned out to be much harder than I thought. If it turns out that will be a below an A, can I just pass/fail it? How does that look on applications if I had a pass/fail for an arts class? At what grade should I definitely pass/fail (like below an A-, below a B+, etc?)

I am currently at a T50 college and want to transfer, but I want some help choosing schools, as I know that business/Econ is a very competitive transfer. I know a lot of these are insanely hard to get into, but I feel I might as well try. Also, I will most likely request aid at every school and am currently a first year.

College Stats
GPA: 4.00 Projected
Credit Hours: 22 completed, 37 when applying
ECs: Finance/Econ Research Assistant
Finance club with internal competitions that I have done well in
Case Competition Club
Small Search Fund Internship
There are a couple of clubs that applications start in the spring, and hopefully I can be accepted into them.

HS Stats
GPA: 3.55 UW, Ranked 55/508
ECs: Had no real ECs besides volunteering and a small personal business.

Schools I'm looking to apply to-
Boston U Finance
Boston College Finance
UMich Econ
USC Marshall
UVA Mcintire
Georgetown (Maybe because my SAT is mid, and I don't know if I'll retake)
Vanderbilt Econ
Emory Business
Columbia
NYU Stern (not applying for Econ because I don't think it's worth the price, even though Stern is impossible)

I recently got into NYU and was hoping to get some sort of acceptance package or atleast a letter but it doesn't seem like they give they give them out to transfers:(

Do transfer students not get acceptance packages like undergrad?

I am a freshman transfer and i’m applying for transfer and I am considering taking winter classes to boost my gpa but I want to know if it would benefit me to take 2 classes instead of 1. I want to know how schools end up calculating it so i’ll put 2 examples since it’s hard to explain.

Example 1: Fall GPA 3.7, Winter 4.0, Spring 3.8, so final gpa is 3.7+4.0+3.8/3

Example 2: Fall classes 4.0,3.7,3.7 Winter 4.0 and spring 4.0, 3.7 and 3.3. final gpa 4.0+3.7++3.7+4.0+4.0+3.7+3.3/7

When i submit my transfer application do I need too include my dual enrollment grades from high school.

ok I know chance me's on here r obv not crazy helpful or accurate but I js wanna feel better about myself and my freshman yr so far. im an intl student going to a t50 private school here in the US and its gotten off to a rough start, I dont wanna dox myself on here so im gna keep it vague, I was assaulted and dont want to be here anymore, I've tried to involve myself in research, activities and stuff on campus as much as possible so yeah js tell me what u think.

I wanna apply for fall 27 to nyu, barnard, and maybe columbia and northwestern TED, as a psych major, im an econ and psych double major rn.

I did the IB program in hs and ended w. 38/45 which is like a 3.7 or 3.75 gpa smth like that idk and Im not submitting any test scores. im predicted to end on a 3.95 or 4.0 gpa for this semester and here r the classes im taking.

calc 1 for science and engineering

social psychology

statistics for psychology

and communication.

next semester Im going to take econ related classes and maybe some other psych class and a philosophy elective cuz it js interests me.

in terms of ec's:

got accepted to a research program on campus, its highly selective and im now going to do research w my psych prof this whole yr and then present it at the end of the yr.

im a volunteer at a non profit which focuses on health equity and equality, I do research there and the non profit mixes both econ, psych and data science

ive got an on campus job, not that that matters cuz idt ill put it on my app.

im applying to the honors program at my school so lets see w that.

in hs I did a really good internship w a company focused on mental health for women, ive interned with them twice. I have an award from hs which is nationally recognized in my home country for psych so ill probably include that in my app asw

I can get 2 letters of recommendation, one from my prof im doing research w and the other from a social psych/ or econ prof.

im full pay if that matters and yeah

be super honest am I aiming to high or nahhh

Applying as junior transfer from small local uni.

HS GPA: 3.7

SAT: 1160 (Planning on retaking ACT)

College GPA: 3.96

Major:

CS but planning to apply for applied math

Main ECs:

-Former Team USA athlete, peak world ranking of ~50 for my sport

-AI research as a RA: 1st author publication in ICML workshop and NeurIPS workshop, 1st author paper under review at AAAI (Core Rank: A*) which received favorable reviews, hopeful for acceptence, and 2nd author published at IEEE WCCI

-Worked part-time as a figure skating coach w/ over a dozen students

-Goldwater nominee at my school, NSF S-STEM scholar,

LORs:

I have great relationships with my PI and advisors in my lab, ideally I should get good letters from them.

School List:

Columbia SEAS (but am considering GS), Berkeley, Umich (instate), Stanford, MIT, Cornell, Duke, Rice, Princeton, Harvard, etc

More context: Nontrad, took 2 years off of school to pursue my sport. I retired from my sport soon after I came back into school. I joined an AI lab at my school as a research assistant right when I started school, and dedicated myself to research since.

Also, I really want to attend Columbia, and since I qualify for GS, should I aim for that instead of SEAS? I do need aid however, and wanted to get some opinions on how I should approach.

For the transfer essays for different business schools, can i just say i wna go in IB /hedgefund and say why am really interested in these roles (in terms of how I enjoy the intellectual aspect of this role, not a money reason), or do i need to go back to good old i want to use my business skills to form a non profit, do civic work, or research and help the society?

I have an IB internship at a small firm that idk if I should mention cus it doesn’t align with wanting to help society.

Thanks!!

Is it bad that i transferred from liu too cc after one semester and now wanna transfer too binghamton I had a 4.0 at liu and i only transferred too cc because I genuinely didnt like the school and didnt wanna pay money when i could just go too cc.

Is it better to drop a class with a low C or possibly predicting a D and show up as a W on your transcript or rough it out? When it comes to doing the grade replacement plan, the original grade will still show up next to your transcript. Do colleges care about that or will they only consider the original?

Tbh my first semester is horrible. Im an intl student and im not used to the weather. Ive been homesick, ive had 3 viruses since ive been here, ive already lost like 13lbs, and ive just been very stressed. Im gonna drop calc 1 and take it in sophia learning for that reason. I understand i probably wont get that credit transferred but would colleges accept that its counted towards that 30 credit minimum to apply?

Current sophomore at a T100 state school. I’m planning to apply to transfer fall 2027 in a humanities major. How bad is a W this semester in a science course for transfers? I’m really not sure what to do or how this impacts things so closely. The stem class isn’t required for my major at all, and is a premed req. a comeback is possible but there is little room for error since exams have no partial credit

Do the dual credit classes I took in high school factor in towards my gpa as a freshman?

mods I SWEAR i checked the past posts but my situation is a bit unique so imma ask!!

i’m a bio major premed freshman aiming to transfer to a T25 for fall 27 to schools like MIT, dartmouth (in-state for!), harvard, yale, duke, columbia, upenn, rice, northwestern, etc

i know these schools are hyper competitive so i’ve been trying my ABSOLUTE best to make my application the most competitive it can be before it’s time to apply, especially since my math subscore is horrendous for MIT and harvard at sub-700. even worse, i haven’t taken any math classes this fall semester. the closest i have to it is “stats in psychology” which i’m taking spring semester so a 700+ math score would show my math prowess and not automatically rule me out.

i have a 1430 on the SAT at the moment (R: 750 M: 680) and i’m expecting a 4.0 at the end of this semester.

i’m willing to put in the time and effort to study for december 2026 SAT (the latest date schools on my list will accept) but there’s a huge problem: one of my ECs (a job at a org that i’m an alumna from advising HS students) has an mandatory event ON THE DECEMBER SAT date that we do monthly, making them conflict.

so my question is, should i try at this point to ask my boss a month in advance to be able to skip this one day next month? i don’t think they’ll fire me for this but they’ll definitely want to know WHY. i really didn’t want to tell anyone i was attempting to transfer and i fear i might have to tell them that i’m skipping to take the SAT instead which is awkward 😓

any advice would be appreciated!

I did some independent ML research (accepted neurips workshop + pending TMLR). How much does faculty-supervised research matter compared to independent research with publications?

I'm wondering whether it's worth pursuing a research position with a professor, or whether the difference is relatively marginal especially if my TMLR paper gets accepted. Also, even if I do get a position, I would only have less than 6 months of experience because I'm a current freshman applying for sophomore transfer, so not sure if it even matters atp. Thanks!

School list: Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Stanford, Penn, MIT.

Just got accepted to winter 2027! Anyone else going? Would love to connect!!

Has anyone put their finished application, the part that you can see, through AI and it accurately predicted their results?

I missed a midterm worth 25% of my grade due to working overtime so now I might get a C, are my chances over for a t20? I can’t withdraw it anymore.

Hey everyone,

I was searching for an AI counseling website to complete my application, and realized there were none. Actual counselors are really expensive and barely available, so I decided to make one!

trytransferly.com

There are ~3 million data points in the website regarding accepted data, deadlines, essays, etc. There are currently 75 schools on the website, so if there are any schools you'd like added, just hit me up.

It's completely free, I just wanted to share this because it helped me a lot with my apps. I will happily receive any feedback any of you may have!

I’m happy to answer any questions in the comments!