KATIE WILLINGHAM: Prepory is a punning team. Okay? Sorry, everyone. It’s where we’ll be at tonight.

JAMES CRAWLEY: We cannot help ourselves. No. We’re so excited to have you guys here. Again, we’ll get started in just about a minute. Wanted to let you guys know, I’m just kinda looking at the poll here to get a sense of who we’ve got in our chat tonight. And I do wanna say that for Katie and I, we… Look. When it’s just us gals, we love to chat. Katie and I can talk all day. So this will be very conversational. We hope it’s very informative as well.

We have, it seems, a good amount of college freshmen who are maybe joining us. Maybe you’re in the first couple of months of your first year in college. Good handful of college sophomores as well. Maybe, again, you’re into the first few months of your second year. And… Or maybe some parents, maybe there’s a few of you out there who are maybe considering transfer after this coming senior year. We will get into all of that tonight for sure with you guys.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Absolutely. Absolutely. It is 08:05. We made it. So take a sip of water. James is gonna be doing a lot of talking tonight. I’m gonna let him introduce himself first. But if you wanna scroll through the poll too Mhmm. And share what we’re seeing Yep. And introduce yourself.

JAMES CRAWLEY: I will indeed. So thank you guys for coming. My name is James Crawley, and I’m the program manager here at Prepory. Before coming to Prepory, I’ve been here for, oh my gosh, over four years now. And not only do I get to work with students and oversee many of our systems as program manager, I still get to work with coaches as well to be a mentor. Before coming here, I spent eight years at my alma mater, Purdue University.

I’m actually surprised I don’t have Purdue swag on right now. Half my wardrobe is still Purdue. But I was the transfer specialist for the last three years that I was there and a senior assistant director of admissions. So I was the one who was overseeing and admitting and denying every transfer application that came into the university. So I have special place in my heart for transfers.

This is a very difficult process oftentimes, and I wanna make sure that we get your questions answered tonight in any way that we can so that when it comes time for you to actually make the move to another university, you feel prepared. And, Katie, I wanna turn it over to you and have you

KATIE WILLINGHAM: introduce yourself. Absolutely. And we do have already some questions popping up, so really excited, you guys. Thank you for bringing those already. My name is Katie. I’m a senior enrollment manager here at Prepory, so I lead the enrollment team. If you book a consultation with us, through the QR code that’s on every single slide, so you don’t have to decide the seconds, but at any point. And we’ll talk a little bit more about the service at the end, but, really, we’re gonna dig into the nitty gritty, transfer details.

Until then, previous to Prepory, I also taught at the University of Michigan. Go blue. And, something I’ve really, learned through James and through having so many conversations with transfer students, is really how to shape this into, a growth process and a mindset around what the future holds. There are so many opportunities and openings. There is always a path forward for the things that you want to do. That’s how I think about college generally, and it’s how I really want everyone here to be thinking about the transfer process.

So excited to be here with you all.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yeah. So thank you, Katie. A little bit about what we’ll be covering tonight. Like I said, at the very end of this, there will be a Q&A, so keep those questions coming. We will have some folks in our chat who are answering the questions as we go along. Any questions that seem to be coming up multiple times, Katie and the team behind the scenes will be throwing those to the very end so that I can answer them all at once for you all.

But we’re gonna try to get into every piece of this here, starting with maybe how it’s different, how it’s realistic, or whether it’s not realistic. Some more of the nitty gritty logistics of when you should be applying, what you should be looking to expect to be reviewed by an admissions committee as a transfer, then, and of course, everybody’s favorite part of any sort of college application, the writing, we will get into the essays, that why transfer question, and a few other things. We will try to make this…

This is gonna be about thirty minutes or so… Thirty to forty minutes or so. We’re gonna have you guys out of here within the hour, including with the Q&A. We wanna be respectful of your time, so we will, we will not be going over tonight. But, again, if you do have any questions, you will see this handy dandy QR code in the top corner of the screen.

I do just wanna call this out at the very beginning, and I feel like I have to do this every time I talk to a transfer student. It can sometimes feel… And I wanna validate this feeling that transferring is somewhat of a negative process. And I don’t mean negative as in we don’t recommend it or somehow it’s wrong.

It’s generally an admittance that where I’m at right now for whatever reason, whether it’s a community college that only offers two years of curriculum or a university that maybe I didn’t think I’d be at or that I thought I’d be at and love, but I suddenly don’t, things change. And so there is an inherent negative tinge to the transfer process, and I don’t wanna have that dispel you from transferring because it’s such an incredible process for so many students.

But I just want to kind of reframe it as Katie was saying before of just you now planning more intentionally where you want to end up. You may have started your university career at a certain institution, now but you get the chance to intentionally pick where you finish it. And with that, I wanna just get us into it, y’all. So how is transfer review different than the first year kind of holistic review that maybe many of you went through back when you were seniors, it still is a holistic read.

By and large, transfers still are reviewed holistically. The main difference that I will… That I need to point out is that many universities will have stated minimums for their programs. So that could be minimums in a few different ways. Minimum GPA, they might outright just say, this is the minimum GPA you need to apply to this specific major or this college or this… The whole university. Maybe it’s a minimum set of coursework requirements. This could be specific equivalencies or general class credits or core competencies.

We’ll get into that a little bit later. That’s its own presentation. But then there also might be the minimum space availability. Some majors, especially at some schools, are outright closed to transfer students. That is an unfortunate reality of this process that there are going to be some doors that are just from the get go closed to students at certain universities who are looking to transfer. Again, we don’t say that to try to dissuade you.

We just wanna be clear about what to expect and the importance of doing your homework ahead of time or having somebody help you with it. As far as how they are judged, you can see the differences here. There are many similarities. Obviously, the main evidence being your academic record. There are some questions that are being asked in the minds of AOs about whether you are ready and that you’d be a good fit on their campus knowing you’ve already been somewhere for your collegiate career.

And then, of course, just your recommenders are at the next level. Typically, they’re gonna be more of the college level professors, teachers, other individuals of that sort. There is a why transfer essay for many universities, sort of a general transfer personal statement, if you will, among potentially other supplemental essays.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Yeah. Absolutely. And we’re already getting a lot of questions about something I think that we didn’t cover on this slide Mhmm. Which is that evidence including extracurriculars, so the things that you’re doing beyond the classroom. Yes. We have… I wanna come at this from a two… Of couple angles. Mhmm. And first, we have in our audience tonight mostly college freshmen. So vast majority of our audience is college freshmen. So first, thinking about… It’s only October. Right? So how do you think about early involvements Yeah.

If towards a transfer process really early on? And then for those at community college, just getting access to certain types of things that maybe their institution doesn’t offer, getting out beyond the campus maybe. Mhmm. How about you think about some of those things? They’re two different angles, the freshman angle and the community college angle.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Sure. Of course. So there are some ways in which we would recommend, and this is something that our coaches will do very heavily with our transfer students, is before they ever join a club or go to a call out and get their slice of pizza and, you know, sit and listen to, why they should join, What we will first start with is what kind of impact are you wanting to make?

By joining this activity, by joining this club or getting involved with this initiative, what is the impact you were hoping to make on your current institution? Because that translates through your application. And that is something… And it’s why… And when you look at the core question for transfer applicants here, it says, are you ready and do you fit? One of the best ways you can show that is through how you’ve chosen to occupy your time and spend your time. So when it comes to that, we really focus on intentionality.

If you’re going into a certain major, join a couple of professional organizations or maybe some more major aligned organizations. Sure. But other things as well, the passions that you might have, We always, always, always also recommend that you look for ways to grow beyond yourself and make a bigger impact beyond just your own personal enrichment. So if you are, let’s say, really interested in… I don’t know. It could be fitness, physical fitness, if you love going to the gym.

Does your school have some sort of organization, like a dance marathon, that involves physical fitness and some planning, but also is geared toward helping sick children at your local, children’s hospital. You know, that’s getting back to your community, but it’s still a way to go into your specific passion.

So that is one way we’d recommend is really looking at the activities that you’re thinking of getting involved in with intentionality so that you can show that you would be a good fit on whatever other campus you may be trying to end up to finish out your college career.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: I think that we spoke to… I kind of, asked these vaguely. So, Nolan, for your question about, you know, your community college, I think a way that… We have a few questions about research specifically, and I think you were pointing at some of the ways that you get around that. Right? Like, finding, volunteering opportunities and thinking about other avenues beyond research that still point to the same interest area, is one way that you can think about that. I

JAMES CRAWLEY: do think…

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Yeah. Go ahead.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Please.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: I do think, right, with all of these questions, one of the reasons that we’re having this conversation Mhmm. About the extracurriculars, is that when you’re thinking about, you know, have you maximized what’s available to you, right, that is academically and beyond the classroom as well. Right? So in terms of the clubs and organizations at your school, yes, nobody expects you to necessarily have a prime leadership role, in your freshman year of college, especially, at a club that, you know, is competitive in some way or something of that nature. But there are lots of types of initiative to show that leadership instead. So can you talk a little bit about leadership as well?

JAMES CRAWLEY: Sure. And leadership doesn’t have to have a title. You don’t have to be the president of a club, but you could be somebody who maybe joined a club and then started some sort of sub initiative that aligned with something you cared about. Maybe, again, it’s something that’s relating to, helping maybe some youth organizations in your community at your current college. But maybe there was no STEM oriented educational program or, like, a robotics team at a local school. Maybe you said, hey. I loved robotics in high school.

I wanna help this local school get a robotics team. Maybe I can do some fundraising or do some canvassing throughout the community. That is a way for you to show leadership and initiative, and that will absolutely help you stand out on an application. I do wanna keep moving along, though, and I… I’ve seen some great questions coming up here in the Q&A. Again, we will try to get to most of these either in the chat or at the very end.

Don’t forget about that little QR code in the top right corner, though, if you wanna have a more in-depth conversation specifically going into your situation. Now I do want to also address the elephant in the room. Transferring is very difficult. It is very tough. And oftentimes, it will have a significantly lower acceptance rate, specifically to top institutions if that is what you happen to be shooting for than the first year applicants or incoming freshmen. This is a major specific breakdown here at UCLA, which is very transfer friendly.

It is a very, very transfer friendly school. Depending on the program, UCLA is obviously known for things like theater, film. Nursing’s a very difficult major no matter where you’re looking. Engineering, of course, the same thing. But you have to really consider the specific majors you’re looking to transfer into as well. Because depending on the universities you’re applying to, those majors could be even more selective.

You just have to, again, do a little bit of homework or maybe work with somebody whose whole job is to help you with that homework as well. It can be a little difficult. But if you’re able to really be intentional about the programs that you select, you’ll be able to give yourself the best shot at having multiple options for universities that you can transfer to. That kinda does lead us into this conversation, though, about realistic chances. When it comes to transferring, I just… We wanna be…

We are big believers here at Prepory that clear is kind. We never want to crush dreams, but we never also want to steer somebody wrong by being nice and not being willing to tell them the truth. The truth is that, especially if you’re looking at a top 10, top 20 institution to transfer to, we’re sometimes talking single or low double digit seats for their transfers for whom they accept.

So it is something that you do need to consider when you are transferring to know why you are transferring and how much you’re needing to transfer. We’ll get to that in just a second. But this is just something to, again, show how competitive it can be. I have a handful of schools here. Again, these are some of the top universities. These are some of the most exclusive ones that many of our students will be wanting to target, and it is helpful, I think, to just see how competitive they can be.

This is, again, not to dissuade anybody here from thinking, oh, well, I’ll never be able to transfer, or I’ll never even be able to transfer to a top university. I’ve had transfers to three of these… I mean, do I have 10 universities? But it took a lot of work. It took a lot of intentionality and a lot of conversation over a long period of time.

So for those of you that are junior, either sophomores or freshmen in college right now, this is a great time for you to be thinking about this and thinking about having somebody come on as a thought partner to be asking you hard questions about why is it you’re specifically transferring, what are your goals, how can we really look at what’s available to you right now to make your application as competitive as it possibly can be. Little bit higher at some of the flagships, though.

So if you are considering things like a, let’s say, Michigan or, again, UCLA, they do have higher rates of transfer. Go blue. This is one time where I will say, go blue. Way to be transfer friendly. It’s really something that we try to present to students when they work with us, the balanced meal here. We wanna set a table that is a healthy balance of all types of food. Yes.

You probably will have some high level hypercompetitive institutions like the one on the previous screen that you’ll be applying to, but we wanna make sure you’re also looking at some of these that can still be phenomenal fits for you and your goals that are a little bit more open to transfers. And then, again, I just wanna sum that up by saying, in…

If you are having that conversation with yourself about what is the realistic chance I have here, some things you can do right now is think about, do I meet the stated minimums? Do I actually… As I go onto the sites of the schools I’m considering, do I meet their stated transfer GPA, required coursework expectations, credit hour minimums? Are they even open to transfers for the major that I wanna apply to? And then can I name exactly why I want to go here?

Because if you can answer those three things and have a solid foundation of those three facets, you are going to automatically increase your chances for admission. I’ll just say this. When I was reviewing applications at Purdue specifically for the college of engineering, which is Purdue’s largest college, so… I don’t wanna give a number to them. I’m gonna say, like, 75%, 80% of the denies that I felt like I was giving to transfer engineering students were because they just had not read our transfer admissions page.

They just hadn’t read that you need this minimum three five GPA. You need these specific equivalencies. And so if they had done that and they’d maybe waited another semester or waited another year, they very likely could have been an admit. So you really have to do your research as a transfer. Speaking of having a balanced list and understanding the why you’re transferring, this is something else that I always talk about with my transfer families.

And when you guys answer the poll at the very beginning, the poll should be back up here. If it’s not, it soon will be, in just a minute. But if you’d like to click back down on that poll, the second question is asking about why you’re considering transferring. So it looks like, actually, the poll just got reset, which is okay. If you don’t wanna answer it again, you don’t have to. I think I saw a good mix there beforehand.

But there’s really three buckets you might fall into for why you’re transferring. The need, the want, and the shooting my shot bucket, if you want to think of it that way. The needing to transfer, as it says here, maybe you are at a community college, which could be a phenomenal starting spot for a lot of students to get on to very competitive colleges.

Maybe your school is closing down, or there’s some other life circumstance that you may not have planned for that means you have to get out of where you currently are. That’s a bucket we work with a decent amount here at Prepory. It’s not as common across the landscape unless it is more of that community college experience. I would say bucket number two is where we see many of our students here at Prepory that are transferring. They are at a university that is by no means bad.

And if they had to finish out there, they probably could. But they are just missing something, whether it’s, some sort of academic fit, academic resources, maybe it’s some newer passion that you developed once you got to campus. I mean, you guys know, especially you freshmen and sophomores, even for you freshmen who’ve only been there a couple of months, oh my gosh. It’s a whole new world. Right?

I mean, there’s so much you discover about yourself even in the few short weeks you may have already been at school that makes you think, oh, I actually really want and need these things to have a successful college experience. That is where we often see many students falling into. They could maybe stay where they’re at, but they really could benefit from being somewhere that is more aligned with their fit. That’s great. We love that bucket as well.

We also like the third bucket, and I will just say I don’t want to… It says I’m shooting my shot because that’s often what it is, and I don’t wanna dissuade anybody or judge anybody for that. If you’re here, and I think we have a pretty good mix, maybe, like, yeah, 37% of you

KATIE WILLINGHAM: We really do. Yeah.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Kind of in that shooting my shot bucket. I’m not I’m not ragging on that by any means. But, again, it’s a matter of just aligning your expectations. If you are shooting your shot, if you’re at a great university that you’re like, yeah. You know what? I could end up here. I could end my time here, find success, get more involved on campus, get more opportunities. But I just have this sort of, like, Moana-esque, you know, it calls me feeling that maybe there’s something else out there. Sorry.

I have a five year old and two year old. I’m gonna reference a lot of kids shows. But there’s maybe something else out there that just could be a little bit more aligned with the academic rigor or the academic environment or the student life, you know, traditions and things of the campus that you’re at. Whatever your three buckets may be. And, again, we have about 16% of you saying that you are wanting to… Maybe you’re needing to transfer. Maybe you are at a community college. Maybe there’s something else.

About half of you are in that second bucket. That’s generally what we see. And then, yeah, about 40%, little under 40% of you guys are in the shooting my shots bucket. Whatever bucket you’re in, just know that you’re in that bucket, and that can really help you to frame the rest of these pieces we’re about to go into. I will say this is something that all of our transfer coaches are very good at getting into right from the get go just so that you know, that they know, that everybody knows.

Okay. We’re probably in this bucket. That’s gonna make our approach, our strategy look like this versus this. As you get into the actual execution phase here, when you start thinking about, okay. Well, when do I actually need to apply? When do I have to get my stuff together? It can be a little daunting. And I wanna make sure that you guys understand the differences here of where you might be starting from.

Again, if you are at a community college right now, this can be one of the single greatest decisions of your life, especially if you are looking to have a little bit more income, save a little bit of money, sometimes taking the exact same classes you would take at the local big flagship public school or small competitive private school. You might wanna stay close to home. Nothing wrong with that at all.

Some students need a little bit more time to kind of adjust to that idea of being out on their own a little bit more. You’re taking some of the same core classes. And then once you successfully do all that, you can very easily transfer after a strong year. That is something that many students are doing. And if that’s you, fantastic. When it comes to the timeline, when you guys applied to schools back in the senior year of high school, most all of you, I imagine, applied in the semester…

The fall semester of your high school’s final year, senior year here in the States. That was basically you applying a full year before you were starting at college. You’d start the following fall after you graduated. When you think about the transfer process, instead of applying a full year before you wanna attend, you’re generally applying about six months or a semester before you want to attend. For instance, for those of you that are wanting to transfer in the fall, I will say that is the heavy majority.

Probably 90 plus percent of students we work with want to apply in the fall, and there’s many good reasons for that. You guys are looking at a prep period of the summer before that fall semester of the year before you’re transferring, prepping throughout the fall, and then the applications themselves typically open in November, and they’re often due in February or March Mhmm. Of the spring right before you attend. If you’re trying to do a spring transfer, it is a much quicker, more stressful time frame.

It’s doable, especially if some of you have to transfer. But for those that are just in that second or third bucket, we do not generally recommend that you transfer in the middle of the school year. There’s so many social things, academic things that are much harder to really manage when you are trying to transfer halfway through the year.

So if there’s any questions about that, again, scan the beautiful QR code at the top right, and then you can go and have this deeper conversation with our fantastic enrollment team or put it in the Q&A. I will say that for… Oh my goodness. My mouse is sleepy. I will say for those of you that are in their first semester right now of college, generally speaking… Again, there’s no absolutes. Only a Sith deals in absolutes. There’s no absolutes when it comes to transfer admissions.

But generally speaking, most universities are going to want to see that you have taken at least a full year’s worth of courses by the time you attend their institution. So some of them might say a minimum of 12 graded credit hours or a minimum of 24 graded credit hours, which is generally about four classes per semester at minimum. Most universities, the average per semester is about 15 credit hours, which if you think of each class averaging out to about three credit hours a class, it’s about five classes per semester.

It’s a lot of math. But, generally, it’s trying to dissuade students from transferring halfway through their freshman year. And if that’s some of you here, I want you to hear this. I would not recommend that you try to transfer halfway through your freshman year. Not only are you going to find it closed in most cases, but academically, socially, financially, and just from a pure mental health standpoint, it is not something we’d recommend.

Even if it wasn’t so ubiquitously closed to transfers to try to do that during their first year, they wanna see that you’re going to be there for a full year to get a good confidence that you can handle a full year’s worth of college courses. So just wanted to put that out there.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: We did have some of those in the chat, so I think it’s a really good thing to bring up.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Cool. Cool. If there’s more at the end, we can definitely transition to that. I wanna pause real quick and take a break. Definitely not because I feel like my voice is about to crack, like, I’m going through puberty. But, Katie, are there any things I’ve missed that I need to go over?

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Great question. I’ve really been spending a lot of focus on the chat, but there are a few things I don’t think we have covered or going to cover. So I’ll ask one of them here. We’ve had quite a few questions about test scores. So, yeah, are we still looking at my SAT depending on, you know, freshman year, sophomore year? You know? Does it make any sense to retake? I don’t know if I got that question, but I got a… That question earlier this week. So we’ll put that in there as well.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Got you. If I could have… And I was told specifically I did not have this power. If I could if I could have renamed this presentation, I would have renamed it to it depends. Because I feel like for no population does that phrase apply more than to transfer students. It truly does depend. I will say pretty confidently here that the majority of universities do not need a standardized test score for their transfer students. Generally speaking, that is not a required piece of the puzzle.

Other schools, Georgetown, are pretty staunchly bent on making sure that you send them every test score you’ve ever taken or thought about taking. It is something that you really just have to look at for specific schools. By and large, though, you are not going to be asked to submit a score for the majority of your of your schools. That is something that I don’t think we explicitly cover in here, but it’s a very good question.

Another one that I did see Zoom by a few minutes ago as well, for the application itself, there is a transfer common application, similar to many of you might have used the Common App back in, high school. And that is… There is transfer common application that you can use as well for many schools, not nearly as many as the beginner application. But contrary to that first year application, there are quite a few schools who have their own internal transfer application. Meaning, you go to their website. It says apply here.

You create your own little accounts, and then you’ll fill out their individualized application. It can be a little bit more frustrating because, obviously, you have to reenter all of that info, but it just depends on the schools that you are looking at. Except for the UCs. The UCs have the same application and the same deadlines for transfers and beginners.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: One more question I wanna combine for us because we’re getting so, so many, and they are so amazing. Cool. But I’m gonna combine this question into, sort of about if any of you in the audience have been asking us about things from high school. So activities from high school, recommenders from high school, other things from high school. So related to, you know, you have your SAT source… Score from high school. Some schools are gonna care about it. Some are not. But tell us about things from high school.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Well, especially for you, you know, 70 to 80% of you being high school… Or, sorry, college freshmen. Yeah. You are just a few months removed from high school. So, again, it feels like, well, okay. If I’m starting to apply in December or January, I’ve only had, what, what is that, five months of time on campus to do stuff. I had a whole bunch of stuff back in high school, but I don’t really have that much yet here. This is one of those things where we really would…

That’s actually one of the things I love most doing as a transfer coach here at Prepory because our coaches will work with students to really understand what kind of impact those high school activities are still having, if at all, on them in their life. There are some cases where maybe something from high school might make its way onto a transfer application. Generally speaking, though, it is something that needs to be in some way still having a presence in your life.

We understand as transfer reviewers that you’re not going to have had that much time to build up this brand new profile, and that’s actually why I didn’t wanna have a whole section here on activities because these other things like grades, rigor, and credits, I promise this is not a plain segue here, but these things are much more important. So when it comes to high school, recommenders, I would not recommend, no pun intended, that you have a recommender from high school.

It would behoove you to start getting to know your professors ASAP, going to office hours. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But it’s something that, again, is for as little as you can putting high school stuff on your transfer application. But that is so specific to each situation. So if you do have any questions about that, you wanna go a little bit deeper, we’re not able to necessarily answer it here.

Take a picture of that QR code or go sign in for that IC here while you’re while you’re waiting, and we’ll get to you within the next, you know, week or so to have that chat. I will say, though, pretty confidently, your academics have always been the most important piece of the puzzle. When y’all applied from high school to college, the essays, very important. Extracurriculars, very important. Letters of recommendation, important. Your academics were the main flavor. They’re the main dish of the table.

That goes even more so when it comes to transferring, especially because of those minimums, but also especially because… And I think I saw this about seventeen minutes ago. Somebody was saying, hey. I’m about to make my fourth or fifth transfer. If that’s you, hey. I did see it. But if you are maybe making your second or third or maybe fourth transfer, there are many paths to getting a college degree. It’s not always gonna happen in four years. That’s okay. That’s not uncommon, and I want you to know that.

If you’re feeling the impostor syndrome as a transfer, feeling like you’re somehow behind, squash that as quickly as you can because that is not true. Nobody cares about how you started high school or college. They care about how you finished. And so I really appreciate anybody who is considering transferring. When it comes to your GPA, there is going to be a cumulative GPA that does this very wibbly wobbly timey wimey thing with your graded hours, your grade points, the actual…

You know, whether you finished a class across certain courses throughout your time, and there will be a cumulative GPA that is created. So every transcript will likely have to be submitted for any coursework you did after high school. Just kind of like high school, though, the recent grades are going to give the most confidence to an admissions committee. They wanna know that you’re on an upward trend or consistently high trend with not only your grades, but the classes that you’re taking. You’re taking major specific classes. You’re taking harder…

Like, if you’re going into something STEM related, you’re taking harder physics classes or calculus classes or chemistry. They’re wanting to see that you are prepping yourself, especially if you fell into bucket three or bucket two, that you are prepping yourself for this bigger jump. Because it’s gonna be more than just the academic jump. It is gonna be the social jump and the just general campus jump moving from one place to another. So they really do wanna see that you’re crushing it in those recent grades. Y’all, I’m gonna be honest.

I could do an entire presentation on just this slide, and I’m not gonna do that because I already did it this summer for all of our coaches. And most of them still like me, but transfer credit equivalencies and transfer credit, in general, is such a central and very important piece of this puzzle, but it can be so confusing. This is actually something that all of our coaches here at Prepory will start talking about with our transfer students in session two… Session one or two.

We want you to understand how your credits are going to come in, what they will come in as, because this is really the lifeblood of everything. This is the central gravitational force that’s keeping it all together. This determines how much time you might have left, your likelihood for admission based on whether they need direct equivalencies or just general credits. It might mean cost. How much time… How much is it going to cost for that extra time? There are so many things that always come back to how are your credits transferring.

So especially getting in early and understanding how you can strategically plan your courses is a very, very big benefit to working with a group like us and working with our coaches because we can really help you to intentionally pick the classes that are going to be most directly related to the kinds of programs you wanna get into. So you… There’s many different ways. If any of you have ever… If anybody is from California or is thinking about California for transferring, check out ASSIST. That is their program.

Transferology is another really good program that doesn’t have every university on it, but it has hundreds, if not thousands. So you can put that in and get a sense of how might your transfer… Your credits transfer. And then there are always things called articulation agreement. I think, actually, some of you back in the very beginning of our presentation asked about, you know, your school might have a partnership with another university. We often will call those articulation agreements.

It generally means if you complete these exact classes with this exact GPA or these grades, then there is some guarantee of a credit transfer or maybe even an admission transfer. You just really have to talk to your academic adviser at your university to understand what those are. I wanted to do another quick pause here. I know we’ve got about ten minutes left of this presentation, and then we’ll get to the Q&A. Katie, any things on the grades, or can we get into the good stuff here with your essay?

KATIE WILLINGHAM: I’ve been clearing out a few that were about AP test scores, how they count in a GPA, things like that. So do you wanna cover APs as well?

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yeah. Of course. APs will not often… Will usually never count towards your GPA. The score itself that you may have gotten from high school, it might test you out of a certain, you know, we’ll say, like, calculus one or maybe a general composition class, English class, but it’s not going to count towards your college GPA. It’s going to help you get out of credits… Classes and maybe earn some credit. I will say just because you can does not mean that you should when it comes to AP credit.

I’m specifically haunted by physics one seventy two from Purdue University, which is the engineering physics. It is… I took it. Oh my gosh. One of our tests was literally three questions, and it was worth, like, 150 points.

It is sometimes the case that starting in what you deem to be an easy do over class, like AP Physics C: Mechanics or the equivalent of it as a freshman, if that’s your fallback class and you could have transferred out of it, you wanted to get it again at the college level, you are sitting pretty. You are in a very, very good space.

I would really encourage you, and this is something, again, that we talk about with all of our students as coaches, really consider how you want those credits to transfer Mhmm. And whether you should. So that’s just a general PSA. I’m just… I’m getting off my soapbox here.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: I mean, it could be great to have expert guidance on that. Right? I think that’s a big conversation. It is. Seems simple. It seems… Or it doesn’t seem simple to find those equivalencies, but it seems simple to answer for yourself. I’d rather check this box. I’d rather be done to this with this particular thing, but it really is going, you know, with the expertise from, you know, from experts on our team about specific institutions and the different… How the different coursework is going to look at different places. You might answer that question differently with support. So I think that’s a big thing.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Right. And I’d… I’ve made so many spreadsheets that just are truly mapping a student’s… How their credits will transfer from one place to another, whether that means they meet the minimum, how do APs come into that. Like, truly, it is a very complicated puzzle, one that we weirdly love to put together. Another piece of this puzzle is the writing.

I said back at the very beginning, y’all, that this sometimes feels like an inherently negative process, that transferring is somewhat of an admission that where I’m at does not have enough for me to finish here, whether it’s because they’re designed that way, like a two year college, they’re closing, or just something else that makes you look elsewhere. When it comes to your writing, you absolutely have to avoid complaining about your school. Nobody wants to read that.

Nobody that goes into admissions goes in wanting to get the tea on why this university or this institution is terrible. They don’t want that. Even if, legitimately, there are many things you could talk about, what they wanna see is somebody who’s not so much looking at the past. If they are looking at the past, they’re looking at it with gratitude, but they’re looking ahead excitedly at the future and what they still want to and need to accomplish.

When it comes to where you should be thinking about with this why transfer question. It’s getting specific about what kind of gaps you’re currently running into at your school, be that academically or socially, resource wise, whatever it might be, and thinking about what kind of resources might help you to expand those… Or span those knowledge or experience gaps to get you from where you are to where you wanna go.

You’ve gotta be able to communicate a vision or the kind of impact you wanna make in your life and the kind of career that you might spend doing that and having that impact. And so trying to be specific, making sure that you’re understanding specifically why a school would be a good fit for you is imperative when you are writing these essays. Katie, do you have any thoughts on this? Because I know you often

KATIE WILLINGHAM: I wanna call out a question that we have here. Yes. Yes. I do have a lot of thoughts about the writing. I talk a lot about this. Yeah. I’ve marked a few things answering live. We have a transfer application that requires a general essay, I guess, and a why transfer essay. Can we reuse material? Would we ever recommend reusing personal statement ask material?

JAMES CRAWLEY: You mean the same personal statement between two questions on the same application or, like, personal statement

KATIE WILLINGHAM: for previous this application has, you know, how those essays are distributed. Sure. But I

JAMES CRAWLEY: can talk to

KATIE WILLINGHAM: was, so my transfer college requires an essay and a why transfer essay?

JAMES CRAWLEY: So

KATIE WILLINGHAM: that’s just the other, yeah, general question. Can I reuse my personal statement?

JAMES CRAWLEY: Sure. That depends. Oh, what did I say this was called? It depends. It depends. This is the this is the whole presentation. It depends, my friend. When it comes to how you should think about these essays, yes. Some schools will only ask that why do you wanna transfer question, but then they’ll, on top of that, say, tell us about yourself or give us some, you know, general personal statement. They’ll have maybe some smaller supplemental essays. Stanford does 75, it feels like, and they have eight. But it…

When it comes to how you should think about essays working in concert together, imagine this application as a book. It is the book of you. And when you’re reading a book and going through it, you wouldn’t wanna get halfway through or three quarters of the way through a book and then have chapter three pop back up again. You would skip right over that. Right? Like, hey. I already read this. So you skip over it and continue on.

Similarly, the essays, the activities, any sort of piece of your puzzle should all fit together, but you don’t wanna repeat. You don’t wanna just use your essays as a chance to talk about the activities you already showed in the activity section and resume dump on them. They’re gonna skip right over it because they already read it. So they need to work together and show different sides of you.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: I think that’s really important, and I think it speaks to the other side of this as you’re thinking about the institutions and where you’re transferring to and how your why connects to the places that you are looking at. We definitely have, some folks asking questions about that prestige element. You know, if my answer is I’m just looking to finish out somewhere better, right, how do I think about this question?

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yeah. And this is something… I’m glad we’re taking a few extra minutes on this one because, truly, this can be, like, one of the hardest pieces of this entire process.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Yeah.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Especially if you are applying to… You just have to realize that the reviewers at these top schools, we’re talking top 10, top 20 universities that we’ve all heard of that are incredibly competitive and fantastic institutions, they assume that there is some element of prestige in the reasoning for why people are transferring to them. They already know that. And if that’s all you give them, you haven’t told them anything they didn’t already assume before they even ever set eyes on your application. So if prestige is part of it, fine. But you…

It has to go deeper than that. Because a lot of these top schools… The spoiler alert here, but a lot of these top schools are not a good fit for many students. Whatever their ranking is. But I will I will proudly say that I do not care for rankings because they don’t really speak to the individual students that I care about, and they’re not necessarily an indication of fit.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: And this is coming from someone who has coached a transfer applicant to MIT. I do wanna put out there that fit is something that we’re thinking about, and you might really have that fit. So it’s definitely not… We’re not talking about any specific institution Correct. But just that, you know, that we’re really thinking about it. We wanna get underneath that. We wanna get underneath that layer.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yes. You really need to. I worked with a transfer student last year. He’s crushing it at MIT right now. I have others that are at Northwestern, some finishing out UCLA, Vanderbilt. Like, I’ve had students that have gotten to these incredible places, but they also had half a dozen other schools or more on their list that were not nearly highly as ranked that they were just as stoked about because they were going to be able to finish strong there and get everything they needed. So you have to have a why behind the reason you’re transferring beyond prestige. And what do you know? Prestige alone won’t persuade. Should’ve gone to those earlier,

KATIE WILLINGHAM: but

JAMES CRAWLEY: it is this

KATIE WILLINGHAM: this year too.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yeah. It’s truly… But it’s a great segue. It’s truly just a matter of finding your fit. And I saw, you know, Adena, thank you for putting that question. I just happened to see this go by. How do you figure out fit? How do you go deeper? Scan that QR code because this is what we chat about.

This is truly, like, one of the reasons why we all get into this work is to be able to sit with young people who have so much potential and have so much going on that they don’t even realize is so cool that we get to say, well, okay. Well, why do you wanna do that? Why do you wanna move forward with that? What kind of skills or passions do you have that you are really excited to use to affect and make positive changes on that big challenge in the world?

That’s gonna be session one or two to really help determine those factors for fit so that you know any school you put on your list is going to be a good potential fit for you. And that just gives you so many more options. I love that aspect of this work, and I know all of our other transfer coaches do as well. So it has to be something specific. You have to get specific and do your research. Looking forward, as I said before, don’t tell them why you’re unhappy.

Show them why your school is the obvious next step, why their school is the best bridge for you to cross to span those knowledge and experience gaps as you head toward whatever life you envision for yourself. And then, of course, as we mentioned before, you know, kind of finishing us out here, college recommenders. It can be a little daunting, especially for you. Again, 78% of you are college freshmen. You’re still figuring out how to be here on campus. You’re still figuring out, hey. Maybe the best route to get to class.

And maybe for some of you, winter is coming, not in the Game of Thrones sense, but just in the very real, it’s getting cold, y’all, kinda sense. There are a lot of things on your mind right now. There’s a lot of things on your plate. But your professors are people, and they are people who are in their positions because they wanna see you succeed, and they want to help you succeed in any ways that you can.

Maybe you are in a large lecture with professors who seem really cool, but there’s 100, 200 other people here. Go to their office hours. Those often go unused, and you can just really get to know these people who are very prestigious in their fields as people, and they get to know you in the same way. So going in, talking about what you’re passionate about, this can go for also academic advisers, mentors, club supervisors.

When I was at Purdue, I oversaw about half a dozen different student organizations as advisers and wrote letters of recommendation for them. It is it is imperative that even though you might be thinking, I wanna go somewhere else, that you’re still getting involved in your campus, and that includes with the professionals who work there. I actually saw somebody a long time ago ask about, can I talk to my adviser about transferring? Yes. Mhmm. Again, I wanna call this out, guys.

I understand that there is this sort of shame that can sometimes come with transferring where you feel like, okay. I… I’ve made the decision. I don’t wanna transfer, but now I feel like I’m gonna be letting my adviser down. That is part of their job, and they are not gonna look at you and be mad. They’re not going to be ashamed of you or think, oh, you weren’t good enough to be here. Or, okay. You’re leaving us. Anybody worth their salt in this field will not approach it that way.

All they will do is help you along the way. That’s all we… That’s why we go into this work. So, yes, you can talk to your advisers, supervisors, mentors, and then, you know, Katie, hit them with some truth. How do you… How important is it to get to know your professors?

KATIE WILLINGHAM: I really love that you broke this down. So I feel like, you hear this all the time. Right? Build these relationships. What does that mean? You already offered a few really concrete examples of how to do this, which is simply showing up to the times that are allotted for you to speak to your professors. Right? So they’re putting this time out there saying, I have office hours. Come speak to me. Check this box. Right? Mhmm. And do this because, you know, you might stay at your institution.

We’re here talking about transfers. Right? Mhmm. But for a lot of you, if you’re thinking about, you know, the possibility of if you’re not at a community college, you might finish out where you are. You might apply to transfer. We don’t know how that process is going to go. It’s inherently complex and nebulous. And these relationships will serve you over the summer to get an internship, to find a research opportunity. They can serve you in, you know, the job landscape. They could serve you on campus. Suddenly, you are…

You will find yourself in a position to be able to start a club because now you have an adviser for that club. Right? So some of the other types of questions that you all have been asking in the chat are connected to this. So it’s not really… I think sometimes people think about this as scaffolding backwards from the letter. Right? I’m gonna need a letter, so let me think about how to get my letter.

And it’s really all of the ways that you can open these doors, and a lot of things can come through these relationships. And, yes, be transparent. Right? Be transparent with your goals. Be upfront with your goals, and open those doors. Ask those questions. And, absolutely, show gratitude. Send those thank yous. You know, you might need those relationships again in some capacity. So let’s do that.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Oy vey. There’s so many good cry… Just… That’s so… Such a great answer. There’s so many great questions going through the Q&A as well, which we will get to. I just wanna… We’re rounding out here. Again, getting back into this general overview, you have to start by knowing your why. Pick that bucket if you wanna think of it that way. Understand the minimums. Do the research as early as you can. Plan your courses.

For some of you freshmen, I am always of the mindset that transferring as a sophomore has many upsides, mainly because you can plan longer, and you have more behind you. It’s not that freshmen should be dissuaded from transferring. We have many, many folks who do it. But, you know, plan those classes. That’s a big benefit of maybe waiting a little bit. Making sure that you’re targeting those exact equivalencies that you would eventually be taking anyway.

As Katie so eloquently just put, meet those professors, build those relationships, make sure you understand the timelines, and then, of course, there are going to be midterms and college reports that are part of the process, especially for top 20, top 30 schools. For the person who just said that their adviser said they don’t help with this, this is one of the ways they actually do help, that you need a university official to fill out the college and midterm report that many top 20 institutions require.

That is something that they will help do. And if you can do all of this, it’s a lot. We know. But that is one of the reasons why we’re here.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: That’s right. It is absolutely the reason that we’re here, is to demystify some of this and help you with the nuances of this process. As many of you are starting to, explore and do your homework about this, do your research about transferring, you’ve probably found there are not as good resources out there for transfer applicants compared to applying in as a first year student. All the applications are not on the Common App. Right?

JAMES CRAWLEY: No.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: That’s come up a few times. Right? The complexity of those credit transfers, right, it’s simply not cut and dry. And one of the things that we talk about all the time from your experience reviewing transfer applications as well, James, right, is how many applications go out the door for minor things, right, or things that could have been resolved Yes. With guidance earlier and a clear strategy in this process. Mhmm. So that is what we are here to do. You’re seeing some of our results here and what we are about.

We’ve been in this industry for over a decade. And I wanna go into the shape of our transfer support as well. So not only are we gonna help with the writing process, which I saw a question about, that one on one advising, really thinking about your coursework, thinking about how to get involved on campus, what your extracurriculars are going to look like, getting around those limitations that you are facing. Our team is so, so, so creative.

Oh, you know, you’ve seen a little bit of evidence for that on this call, but, really, we will really dig into your specific needs and start asking, you know, can we go off campus here? Can we go off campus this day? Can we talk to this person about this opportunity? Right? We’ll come at it from every single angle with you. Yeah. And you are just trying to learn a new place and stay on top of your coursework if you are a freshman. Right?

So someone that is really providing that structure around your process is going to be truly invaluable. The other thing I wanna call out here that I’d be happy to talk more about, James is the organizer of our transfer committee review process. And this is really so special at Prepory. It is kind of unique to us in this space.

There’s a lot of kind of application committee review type things out there, but really not focusing on transfers and having this, again, built into our process to really review transfer specific applications altogether as a cohesive whole, it is so, so valuable and such a game changer for our students.

JAMES CRAWLEY: I’ve kind of made it part of my mission as somebody with a deep love for and background in helping transfers to bring these kinds of resources properly because there’s just not many out here in this space of college advising. And this is a good indication of the full team support. What will happen is in February…

Late January, early February, we will have a full week of reviewing for all of our transfer students where a team of former admissions officers and admissions experts will come in and actually look at every piece of the puzzle that you’ve made, your writing, your academics, the college list you’ve put together, the activities that you have listed, and give a full sort of health check, a barometer read of how you’re aligning to those different institutions and giving a realistic idea of what’s coming through. What kind of narrative themes are we seeing?

For better or worse, what kind of things do you and your coach need or want to address before you ever hit submit? And so it gives you a trial run at the admissions process. It’s one of my favorite things of the year. I love running it. And for transfers in particular, it’s very helpful to have some, you know, third party feedback outside of your coach and just speaks again more to that full team support mentality that we have.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Absolutely. Yeah.

JAMES CRAWLEY: We wanna get to Q&A. We know that we’re three minutes here before the hour. We will stay on for extra At least, Katie, I don’t wanna speak for you, but I can stay on

KATIE WILLINGHAM: the Absolutely. Yeah. We’ll be here for you extra minutes for sure.

JAMES CRAWLEY: But for those of you that have to go before you do, take a quick scan of this QR code. If we didn’t get to your question tonight or if you have to run, please set up a free consultation with us. This is just an easy conversation that just… You get to sit and talk with Katie and… Which is what I would wanna do all day, but you really get to get into the nitty gritty of what is it you’re looking for, what do you need help with, what is stressing you out the most, and how we might be able to help you with your specific situation.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Absolutely. So We have so many good questions here Okay. In the chat. Yep. And we, congrats to our team. They’re still keeping us ahead. We have answered more than are open, but

JAMES CRAWLEY: it’s

KATIE WILLINGHAM: close. It stayed really, really close throughout. You guys have brought so many amazing questions. We’ve… I’m trying to capture, when I ask, or field some with you, some things that are coming up a lot. So some of these may have been answered already, but Mhmm. We had a lot of questions about, either in the transfer process or applying direct from high school. If I was waitlisted or deferred or even… Or accepted at a prior institution and now I’m somewhere else and I’m looking at reapplying? How does kind of reapplying impact things?

JAMES CRAWLEY: So it would show up as two different applications in their portal. I don’t wanna… Again, it depends on the university, But most universities use a program called Slate, which is their internal CRM, where they just house all the student data and the applications. When a student has applied as a first year applicant, a beginner, that application will show up in their profile. If they also then apply as a transfer, that’ll show up as a different application in the same profile.

So if you’ve applied to a school before, they will have a profile on you, but it will be a different application they’re looking at. Sometimes they might refer back to the high school application just to maybe check something, But by and large, they are looking at your college experience and the transfer application that you’ve put together indicating how you’ve spent your time at the collegiate level. So that’s how it would be. Does that does that answer the question of how it would be viewed?

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Yes. I think it’s helpful, and I think it’s, you know, it’s also gonna have some nuance to it. Right? You

JAMES CRAWLEY: know, corporate

KATIE WILLINGHAM: institutions are gonna look at that in different ways.

JAMES CRAWLEY: So they might see that you are waitlisted or deferred, but that doesn’t mean that they’re just gonna bar you automatically from potentially being admitted as a transfer. If that’s what’s kind of the subtext of what’s being asked there.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Yeah. Or does it help me? Was… I think more does it help

JAMES CRAWLEY: you? Not necessarily. I would say it’s a neutral point. It might show demonstrated interest. Like, hey. I did y’all before. I’m doing it again. But I wouldn’t I wouldn’t put it as a huge factor by any means. No.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Yeah. And same direction. Right? You know, I wouldn’t say it hurts you either necessarily. Right? Mhmm. And we had a few questions also about double majoring. You know, should I drop a major to transfer? How do you help, applicants think about, the major declaration that they’re making in the transfer process?

JAMES CRAWLEY: Sure. And the major, it’s gonna, again, be about alignment here. So the courses that you’re taking currently are already telling a story. If you’re double majoring at your current institution, whether you’re a freshman or a sophomore, it’s already telling a story. Right? And if you’re taking more… Let’s say you’re double majoring in, I don’t know, anthropology and computer science. If you’re taking more computer science classes and maybe one anthropology course per semester, that might also align with a minor or major in anthropology.

They’re likely going to be looking at you more as a CS student. But as far as how that affects your transfer likelihood, they’re going… You… You’re really gonna have to decide with either yourself, your family, or potentially a coach to understand where it is you actually wanna end up and what the best route would be for you to pursue to get there as far as a career, as far as an institution that you can graduate from.

So I don’t wanna say it depends, but double majoring is typically not a huge piece of the application process. You have to pick a single major to apply to for most institutions. Some of them you can apply generally to the university, but there’s not gonna be, like, a… I’m gonna come in as a double major in these two things. I want you to consider me for that. That’s not how it works.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: I think that covered a few others here about, you know, I might you know, it might change my major while transferring. Sometimes there’s a major at another school that isn’t something that you have offered at your school. So that’s another just Yeah. Piece here.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yeah. Definitely.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Let’s see. I am scrolling furiously to see what we can get to

JAMES CRAWLEY: here. You know, I wanna say too. What we’ll stay on for another five… Another ten minutes or so if for those of you that are still here and wanting to chat, we’ll do our best to answer these. But before you head out, I, again, would recommend that you guys just take a quick snapshot of this QR code. How long are ICs, Katie? Twenty to thirty minutes?

KATIE WILLINGHAM: That’s right.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yeah? Oh, cool. Okay. Well, that was a guess, but I… I’m… I thought that was the case. It’s a quick conversation, but it’s another way for you, again, to get some of these more detailed questions answered to your degree of likelihood, like, to the degree that you’re satisfied. So we’ll keep answering these. We’ll keep going through. Were there any other trends that you were seeing across the board as far as questions being

KATIE WILLINGHAM: This is a good one that I don’t think we’ve talked about. What’s a good range of schools to apply to transfer to?

JAMES CRAWLEY: Oh, very good question.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Yeah.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Typically, when we work with our beginners, we will generally work with up to about 15 applications. That includes things like BSMD, honors colleges, not always necessarily 15 schools. For transfer students, I would say anywhere from five to 10 is what we’re looking at. There’s a certain curation that comes with maturity. You know a little bit more about what you want. When you’ve been at a university for even six months or a year and a half, you have a much better idea of, okay. What do I really need?

Get beyond the prestige. Get beyond the rankings or hearing about the Ivy League. What is it I’m actually needing to graduate successfully to help me achieve my definition of success? We have found that anywhere from five to 10 is the… A perfect number for transfer students to consider. It’s enough to give them some wiggle room to have a balanced list, have a few more reach schools, but also some other universities, especially if they need to transfer or, you know, should transfer.

They’re in bucket one or bucket two, then it gives them room to also look at some good target and likely schools that will provide what they need but have a higher chance of acceptance.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Yes. Helpful. Mhmm. Let’s see.

JAMES CRAWLEY: I’m looking as well.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: How do you figure out that you answered this? Beautiful. Mhmm.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Cool. We’re both looking through them. These are such good questions. They’re so

KATIE WILLINGHAM: amazing.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Some have already been answered, but when you’re changing your major, it’s transfer… You know, this is one that I’m seeing, and I’ve seen a couple of times. I kinda just refer to this. But if you’re looking at changing your major when you transfer, you just have to think about alignment. I mean, overall, guys, when they’re thinking about, should we admit this student here? Number one, they’re gonna be looking at those minimums to make sure that you have done your due diligence. I mean, that even says something…

That communicates something in and of itself. Did you do the work to look at the deadlines, understand the minimums, understand the complications of credit evaluation? But then also, if you are changing your major, do you have a specific reason for doing so? If the only reason you’re thinking of changing your major is because you think, well, there’s a bunch of other majors that are interesting but are much easier to get into so I can get there, then I can switch to computer science, that ain’t it, man. That…

That’s definitely not the way to go because AOs can smell that from a mile away. They can smell when somebody’s trying to backdoor their way into a university because they say they want something, but then their application is showing a completely different story of interest. So really make sure that you have that alignment if you are switching majors.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Mhmm. I think this was a really related question. Yeah. So I think it’d be a fun one to answer. Mhmm. So, Zachary, thank you for your question. It’s about how specific to get about things at a new institution, in your in your kind of why transfer essay or in your application writing. So specific classes at the desired school, just clubs and organizations, you know, how narrow, how niche do we go?

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yes. That’s a great question. Oh my gosh. How many people are still here? Do we still have… Oh, yeah. We still have a lot of people here. It’s fantastic.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: A lot of people here. It’s wonderful.

JAMES CRAWLEY: So this is such a great question, and I feel like I apologize about this all the time here at Prepory. Goes back to this concept that I referred to called bridging. And this is for any of you… If there’s any of you who are in high school right now that are also in the midst of the season, you’re applying to colleges, maybe you’re your younger sibling sitting here next to your older sister or brother, The concept of bridging relates to these why us questions. When they’re asking, why us?

What is it about us that’s unique? Why do you wanna come here? I don’t know why I’m suddenly from New York and New Jersey. But what you have to think about when it comes to bridging is you have to give these universities, these admissions readers a specific vision for the kind of goals you have after college. And so when you just name drop a couple of classes or some professors doing research and saying, these classes sound interesting, and they’re related to the major I just mentioned.

These professors are doing things in the classes that I just mentioned that are related to the major that I previously mentioned. It’s not telling them anything that they didn’t already assume or know. And you have to remember, for as much as I had to know as an admissions officer, I did not have an encyclopedic knowledge of every class and every professor and every club on campus nor did I care nor do they care. If you’re if you’re only going into it by saying, look. I looked at all these classes online.

It’s not personal to you. Why are those classes specifically important to you? What kind of impact are they going to have on helping you become more aligned or effective in achieving that vision that you lay out for what you wanna do after college. A very quick example of this is imagine that you are transferring. You wanna do something in engineering, and you are saying, you know, one of the problems I wanna solve in the world is robotic surgery, specifically RFID kind of Bluetooth distant robotic surgery so that robot…

Surgical robots can be controlled from doctors hundreds or thousands of miles away, maybe in low access areas. One of the biggest problems with these robots is that they lag. The parallel processing needed to make sure these robots work in the middle of a surgery so they don’t, you know, lag or skip is imperative.

And, thankfully, doctor Ramesh Chandran is one of the leaders here at Georgia Tech in this world of surgical robots and specifically in parallel processing, and his work is gonna help me learn x, y, and z. That is getting specific. You’re talking about a professor, sure, and his research, sure, but you’re specifically connecting it to a longer term vision or goal that you have. Does that make sense? I know you can’t respond

KATIE WILLINGHAM: to anything It was so specific. So……

JAMES CRAWLEY: Another… I have, like, a whole stack of soap boxes right over here that I’m trying not to get on, but this is one of those.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: You can’t see them. You can’t

JAMES CRAWLEY: You can’t have a background…. The background. Yes. Exactly. Any others here? We have a bit… Like, we’ll say another two, three minutes or so. But for those of you… Again, I will say one more time. For those of you who feel like we’ve not been able to get to your question or you should have one that’s much more specific to your situation, do not leave here disheartened to please just scan our QR code for the sake of time. You know, we just unfortunately can’t be here all night. Much as we’d like to be, we have a whole team behind us that we’re also having help. Please get in this QR code and set up an IC. We would love to chat with you. Maybe a couple more. Two or three more, Katie, that we

KATIE WILLINGHAM: can Absolutely. Get this one’s easy. Well, easy in the sense that I think

JAMES CRAWLEY: there’s a simple answer to that…. To

KATIE WILLINGHAM: transfer some of that. That’s right. I’ve accepted it already. Mhmm. But will… If you have required classes that you need to take before you transfer and you’re taking them in the spring, but you’re submitting your application in the spring Mhmm. Mhmm. How does that work?

JAMES CRAWLEY: Oh, yes. Now I don’t wanna use the I don’t wanna use the word defer because defer has a specific connotation to the freshman applications, you know, getting deferred from maybe the EA or ED round of admission to a later round. It’s kind of a wait and see sort of decision. There is something similar but much more specific in the world of transfers. We call that the pend decision. I know. They’re synonyms. The pending decision is essentially…

It’s something I would hand out all the time as the transfer expert for Purdue’s College of Engineering. When I saw that, you know, just as an example, Purdue engineering required a specific equivalency to math one sixty five, math one sixty six, physics one seventy two, chem one fifteen, chem one sixteen, engineering one thirty one. I cannot believe I still remember all these. They require direct equivalencies to a… About half a dozen classes. Generally, like, as you heard, math one and two are not… They’re sequential.

You can’t take them at the same time. So, generally, a student would be, as a freshman, in one of those in the fall and the other in the spring. If I saw that they had everything else in place and they were a pretty competitive student, I would see them in, you know, February, March and see, oh, cool. Okay. They’re taking two or three of the required courses right now. I’m gonna pend them. And that just means it’ll say, hey. We’re not denying you. This is not a deferral.

What we’re looking at is that we see you’re taking some of the required courses right now that we require. So please send us your transcript as soon as you get it in early May, and we will make a decision then. That still is heartening. Obviously, there’s still a time gap there. I know that’s not necessarily a decision everybody wants to get, but that is a little bit more cut and dry than just a general, we’re gonna defer you, and we might waitlist you. We might admit you. We might deny you.

We don’t know.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: So Helpful. Yeah. I think it’s, it’s helpful to know, right, that it’ll still be in play. Right? Yeah. You’re not gonna kind of have your application automatically rejected because you haven’t completed those classes. Right? So, can you transfer? Can you submit your transfer application? Yes. Yeah. And that expectation is there that you’ll be doing that. Right?

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yeah. Mhmm.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Let’s see.

JAMES CRAWLEY: I have one that I’ve seen

KATIE WILLINGHAM: a couple of… Do it.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yeah. Please. I’ve seen a couple of people ask something about this in terms of the types of

KATIE WILLINGHAM: courses

JAMES CRAWLEY: they might be taking, whether that’s general courses or foundational courses. You know, how can you how can you assume that the classes you’re taking are going to have an impact for better or worse when you go to apply to a

KATIE WILLINGHAM: university?

JAMES CRAWLEY: And what I’ll say is that when it comes to the coursework that you’re taking, you really wanna make sure that you have looked at what courses they might be similar to at the new institution. There are many different… Again, it depends. There’s many different ways that universities will name the four year breakdown of all the classes you would take. I found that plan of study is often a common one.

But what you can do ahead of time, if you are considering a transfer, think about a major that you wanna go into. Think about a school that you might wanna go to. And if you guys wanna write this down, I’ll give you guys three seconds to grab a pen or pencil, or you have your phone, just type it and send it to yourself. Plan of study.

Go look that up for a major at a school that you’re interested in, and look at the four year breakdown of all the classes that you likely could take even in those first two years. And that’ll give you kind of a road map to think about, okay. Well, that’s what they have. Here’s what I have. Okay. I’m seeing some similarities. Maybe use their transfer credit database that they might have to be sure that there’s one to one equivalencies or what have you.

But that is a good way for you to kind of know ahead of time. Is the coursework I’m taking or considering taking going to actually help me? Let’s… Maybe if we have time for just one more here because we This one’s

KATIE WILLINGHAM: easy since I agree. I think we can wrap it up here. Yeah. And this one seems pretty straightforward to me. And we also have a lot of, I will just put out there before we ask this question. We have a lot of questions that maybe we answered or answered, partially where I also, answered a few questions where I said reach out to the admissions office. Right?

So if you do have a really specific question for a particular program, I’m seeing one here about I have to miss a day of something or something like that, reach out to the school. Yeah. So I’ll just put that out there. We don’t have all the answers for that specific school, but, reach out directly. And we do help students with that process when you’re working with Prepory as well. What does that look like?

JAMES CRAWLEY: You know,

KATIE WILLINGHAM: what are those, questions

JAMES CRAWLEY: Yeah. Like reach

KATIE WILLINGHAM: out to the admissions office.

JAMES CRAWLEY: We are partners with them. Right?

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Mhmm. I like this question. I think it’s a simple one for us. Is it better to apply early? In hopes one’s application will be read earlier or apply later knowing that there are things I’d be able to do given time and to talk about that in my application.

JAMES CRAWLEY: You said this is an easy question. What are you talking about? Taking the

KATIE WILLINGHAM: cake here.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Goodness. Is water wet? I don’t know. Is it? Because maybe it’s… I don’t know. That is… I… It’s… When it comes to this question, I think that you really have to think about how universities are often reviewing these applications. Even though they don’t have rolling admission, they might not be rolling their decisions out at the same… At you know, once a week or something like that. Maybe they have a decision release day. Transfers, it is actually much more common to have a rolling release of decisions. Yeah. It is also common to have a rolling… You know, as applications are coming in, that is how we’re considering the applicants. Some of the top 20 and top 30 schools, they will have a specific deadline in February or March.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Mhmm.

JAMES CRAWLEY: They’ll often wait until around that deadline to start reviewing, but they’ll usually have started before that. We’re not sitting there waiting for every app. We just don’t have the time as admissions counselors. So it is often going to be the case that depending on the school you’re applying to, waiting until the deadline doesn’t necessarily hurt you. But if you have a good application to submit earlier, then we always recommend early is on time, on time is late, and late is left. We really want you to make sure that you have a good cushion of time. And if there is that possibility that getting reviewed earlier matters, your application can be in that early, early pool.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: What is that time range that you’re thinking about? Like, what would be way too early?

JAMES CRAWLEY: I mean, way too early would be if the app opens on November 1. Doesn’t matter. Like, if you don’t submit it till the following calendar year, you’re probably fine. Because you have to think about this too. These are people. These are just people. They’re taking two weeks off the holidays just like a lot of people do because of, you know, the second half of December. Thanksgiving is there too for those in the States.

So it’s really just a matter of calling them, understanding how they might do their admissions review, and making sure you have things ready as early as possible. And, y’all, I’ll say for a final time because that was gonna be our final question, is a recording of this gonna be sent out to all of the participants? Yes. I’ve seen a lot of you ask that. Absolutely. There will be a recording of this. But before we sign off, please do scan this and set up a call with us.

We’d love to answer those questions that maybe we weren’t able to get to. We know how stressful this process is. We are here to help.

KATIE WILLINGHAM: Thanks for being with us tonight. Bye, everyone.

JAMES CRAWLEY: Thank you, everybody. I hope you have a lovely evening for those that are still here, and we will see you later. Good night. Bye, everyone. Good night.