The background of transfer students often follows similar paths. Some students are forced to leave their old institutions because a parent is deathly ill. Others are pushed out due to tuition hikes at their current institutions. However, the most common path for a transfer is the community college route where a student, after taking a few courses or graduating from a community college, decides that they want to finish their bachelors at a four year college or university. Because the community college path is the most common background of a transfer student, the following advice on how to attain a good financial aid package as a transfer student will be most useful and relevant to this demographic.
As most college students know, the best financial aid packages are often given to first year students. As a result, this can make transferring schools more difficult as the amount of financial aid available at most institutions are limited for transfers. This means that transfers seeking large financial aid packages will have to conduct more diligent research about the universities/colleges they wish to transfer too, and be more strategic in how they spend their time while attending a two-year college. Listed below are a few characteristics that most benefit a transfer student wishing to have an affordable bachelors degree within reach.
- Be Sure to Keep Your G.P.A at a 3.5 or Above
As cliche as it sounds, the quality of your g.pa will be make or break for the amount of financial aid you will be able to receive when transferring. Especially in the case of attaining a full ride or full tuition scholarship. In fact your best bet will be to keep your financial aid at a 3.8 or above to maximize your chances of being a recipient.
2. If You Are Aiming For a Full Tuition Scholarship Understand the Schools that Offer this Award May Not be the Most Prestigious
If you are aiming for the ivy league, public ivies, prestigious liberal art colleges, etc,. Be mindful that most of these places only offer need based financial aid to transfers. This means that if you or your parents income (if classified as a dependent) falls in either the middle or upper middle class, you will be expected to make a large financial contribution to your education at the above mentioned schools. Therefore, getting a full tuition scholarship will also depend on how much you favor prestige versus cost. This is because the reason as to why some schools can afford to give full tuition scholarships to transfers is directly related to the fact that their lack of prestige means they must give more in order to attract quality students. Prestigious colleges and universities do not have this problem, which means that their threshold to go up and beyond financial aid wise will be much lower. However, make no mistake, even though the college that you may receive a full tuition scholarship from might not be as prestigious as the top schools, it does not mean that the school will necessarily be a bad one or lack the necessary resources and opportunities for you to succeed in your major/field/career.
3. Save a travel budge
Some full scholarships require a student to make a trip to a prospective school’s campus for an interview. A travel budget would be helpful in this instance because you don’t want to lose out on the chance of a scholarship valued at 120,000 plus because you didn’t have (at minimum) 200 dollars to travel to the school.
4. Be Prepared to Have a Flexible Major
Because some of the schools offering full rides and full tution scholarships are smaller, their major availabilities will also be smaller. This means if you want to major in something specialized, like data security or international relations, that option may not be available outright. However most schools offer an interdisciplinary option, and allow you to double major. This gives you an option to get creative and formulate an academic plan that best meets you goals.
This is just part one of my transfer series. Stay tuned.
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