Not to be taken lightly...
Jun 13 '00
Sometimes things don't turn out quite the way you thought they would. I know from personal experience that choosing a college can definitely fall into that category. As long as I can remember, I had basically planned on going to Georgia Tech -- basically because I figured I'd do something in the area of computers. So, I applied to Tech, as well as one other school (The University of Georgia) as a backup. I got into Tech easily, and proceeded to major in Computer Science.
Without going into any gory details of the two years I spent at Georgia Tech, it just was not the school for me. It's not that there's something fundamentally wrong with the school really, but it's an engineering school -- and I found out that I don't want to be an engineer. So, I transferred to The University of Georgia after my sophomore year.
Let me start out by just saying that it's over a year later and I *still* have yet to completely finish straightening out my transfer credits. I believe that I still have outstanding a literature class that should have counted for a particular requirement but didn't. From everything I've heard about transferring from other people who have done it, as well as from my own experience, I must conclude that this kind of enormous pain in the butt is the rule rather than the exception when one transfers schools. The longer you wait, in most cases, the more difficult things will be when you transfer.
One piece of advice I will give is not to transfer after just one quarter or one semester. I don't see how anyone could possibly know all the ins and outs of whether a particular school is a good match for them in just one term. Likewise, don't wait longer than two years to transfer, or you'll probably find yourself losing credit left and right, and spending more time in college than you had initially planned on.
In my case, my GPA went down by transferring, because the grades for some classes that I had taken a community college during high school (joint enrollment) and as a transient student over the summer were factored into my GPA at UGA, whereas they hadn't been at Tech. The other side of that coin is that I gained several hours of credit by transferring, which is especially significant considering the fact that I would have actually lost a significant amount of credit by staying because of semester conversion. Another side effect of transferring has been that I basically get to take no free electives at any time during my college career, because all of the classes for my old major and several of my core classes from Tech transferred as free electives.
If you expect your credits to transfer more easily, you might want to think twice. Every school that I have attended has been a member of the same state-wide university system, which supposedly has the same core requirements and class equivalencies at every member school. I can only imagine what it would have been like had I transferred to or from a school outside The University System of Georgia.
This is not to say that there are not advantages to transferring. Personally, I've felt much better about school and enjoyed my classes much more since I transferred and changed my major. I feel a lot better and more confident about where I'm headed in life, which has helped me immeasurably -- it's something I never thought much about until now.
So basically, my advice to anyone who's thinking about transferring is to do just that -- think about it, long and hard. Don't transfer on a whim because you hate your school -- who says it will be any better anywhere else? Hang in there, see if it gets better, and if it doesn't, you might want to start checking your options. Just be sure to make an informed decision.
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Epinions.com ID:
basilisk4
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Location: Atlanta, GA
Reviews written: 233
Trusted by: 214 members
About Me:
Soon-to-be married 26-year-old lawyer who likes electronics, computers, and cars.
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