Transfers finally at home at Penn

Most students remember the admissions process -- stressing over essays, SAT scores and teacher recommendations while anxiously anticipating acceptance letters and the end of high school. Almost all current Penn students picked Penn in high school, got here and stayed here. There are some students, though, who didn't take such a straight and easy road to Penn, and endured the application and transition process not once, but twice. Luckily, it seems that for most transfer students who chose Penn the second time around, it was worth it. Around winter break last year, Aviva Weinberg, now a College sophomore from Baltimore, Md., was a freshman at Yale University and decided she wanted to consider transferring. A fine arts major at Penn, Weinberg said, "The major reason for me was that I was very disappointed with Yale's fine arts program." Currently studying figurative sculpture, she prefers a classical approach, noting that at Yale, she found a "very imbalanced art department, heavily weighted toward contemporary art." Weinberg explained that after visiting colleges in high school, she never really had her heart set on Yale, or any other school, for that matter. "I did the campus circuit," she said. "It really doesn't tell you enough about a school. You never really know until you're there." After looking into the art departments at Penn and Columbia universities, Weinberg decided on Penn. "There is a very strong fine arts department, a diverse number of courses and lots of individual attention," she said. Weinberg's story is similar to those of many students who apply to Penn as transfer applicants. But moving from one school to another is not always a simple matter. To begin with, it is more difficult to get into Penn as a transfer applicant. According to Mark Shank, associate director of transfer and international admissions, the acceptance rate for transfers who entered in 2002 was 20 percent. Penn usually receives 1,700 to 1,800 transfer applications per year, mostly from current college freshmen, competing for between 200 and 235 spots. The transfer application deadline is March 15, months after the freshman regular decision deadlines have passed. The application process is a little different once students have spent a year or two at another college and are not applying straight from high school. "We consider the same key areas that appear in the freshman application with a few additions," Shank said. "For example, we would like to see two college faculty recommendations instead of two high school teacher recommendations. Also, an essay on why they want to transfer to Penn." The applicant's high school grades are not as important as those received at another college or university, according to Shank. "The main area of focus academically would be the college transcript grades and course selection," he said. "In addition, we would also like to see what type of activities and the level of involvement they have pursued outside of the classroom at their current institution." Some students send a transfer application to Penn hoping for a second chance. "We do see a fair number of former applicants in the transfer pool each year. This includes students who were accepted, denied and waitlisted when they applied as freshmen," Shank said. Transfer students come to Penn from different colleges and universities around the country and abroad for a variety of different reasons -- ranging from a desire to be in a more urban environment to an interest in a specific academic program. For Zach Mager, a Wharton sophomore who spent his freshman year at the University of Michigan, there were many incentives. "I decided that I wanted to transfer midway through my freshman year," Mager said, adding that he was not satisfied with the program at Michigan's business school from the start. "The way it works is that you have to spend your first two years in the literature college, then apply to the business school." Mager cited several reasons for choosing Penn as an alternative. "It has a strong business school, is great academically, on the East Coast, which is a great location for jobs I might be interested in, and gets me away from home into a completely different setting," he said, noting that he is a Michigan native. Beyond dealing with the application process, coming into Penn as an upperclassman is certainly not always easy. Despite the fact that the University offers an orientation week for transfer students, having missed the freshman experience still deprives them of access to some of the special resources devoted to incoming freshmen. "It's definitely difficult to come in as a sophomore," Weinberg said. "People formed friendships freshman year. It's a year of extreme bonding, so becoming socially comfortable is slower." Mager attended some transfer student orientation activities, and his transition went smoothly. "It was a good experience," he said. "I met some of my best friends, and I'm still friends with some of the transfer coordinators." Living on a floor with many other transfer students in Sansom West has also facilitated the transition for Mager. "The one bad thing is that it did limit me to all transfer kids at first, but it's good to be able to talk to kids who are going through the same thing," he said. "I got lucky," Mager added. "I met some really good people when I first got here that made the transition really easy for me." Weinberg also said she is pleased with her experiences, noting that "Penn has great opportunities academically, socially and artistically. I love the fine arts major, the professors and the classes. It's a good personal fit." Weinberg said she was not aware of the possibility of living with transfer students and thought it "was a poor idea." "I wanted to be integrated into the student body, not labeled as a transfer student." Weinberg eased the transition by getting involved on campus. She interns as an Israel advocate on campus through the Israel Campus Initiative and also works at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "People were really friendly from the beginning," Weinberg said. "The only negative part of the transition was the paperwork at the beginning to transfer credits, but I guess that's a necessary evil."