High hurdles for those hoping to transfer to Princeton, Harvard

“They called me to say ‘You’re in!’ So I took my last final and then dropped out of Brandeis,” Hopen said.

Currently a Princeton senior, Hopen received a cross-country scholarship to Brandeis upon graduating from high school and enrolled. Hopen quickly discovered that “it just wasn’t the right fit.”

Though Princeton has not accepted transfer students since around 1990, Hopen found that she could apply if she were willing to forfeit her credits from her first semester at Brandeis. “I was on a scholarship [at Brandeis], so it wasn’t like I was losing a lot of money,” Hopen explained.

According to Princeton’s admission policy, though, Hopen’s situation would seem an exception to the rule. “Students who have already completed a term or more as a full-time degree candidate at another college or university are considered transfer applicants and may not apply for freshman admission,” University spokeswoman Emily Aronson said in an e-mail.

Hopen included a letter explaining her unusual situation in her application and asked admissions officers at the University to inform her of their decision before she completed her first term at Brandeis, which would make her a transfer student and ineligible for admission. Since Hopen applied for early admission, she had not technically completed a full semester at Brandeis when she received the phone call. The elimination of Early Decision has made this option impossible for other students in her situation.

When asked if Hopen was allowed to transfer because she had not finished her term or because she forfeited her credits at Brandeis, and if this were a possibility for other students, Aronson said in an e-mail, “We can’t speculate about individual cases because all admission decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. There are a range of considerations for any student applying to Princeton. The spirit of the policy intends to convey any transfer of credits or academic standings from any universities.”

For James Rappaport, a USC sophomore who wants to transfer to a smaller liberal arts school, Princeton’s policy of not accepting transfer students is disappointing.

“That’s kind of a strange policy because most other top schools ... only accommodate between 5 to 10 percent of [transfer] applicants, so, frankly, you’re dealing with a much more competitive applicant pool,” Rappaport said.

Having lost his chance at Princeton, Rappaport applied to several other schools. He will not find out about his status at most of them until May. Last week, however, he learned that his application to Harvard had been denied, along with the other 1,307 transfer applications this year.

On March 20, more than a month after the 2008-09 transfer application deadline, Harvard administrators announced in an e-mail that the school will not be accepting transfer students for the next two years due to overcrowding in its residential houses.

“Honestly, it kind of bummed me out, but it wasn’t unreasonable,” Rappaport said. He said he wondered, though, why the school did not anticipate the housing limitations prior to the application deadline.

Seth Hunerwadel, a Georgetown sophomore who applied for transfer admission only at Harvard, called the announcement “outrageous” and “unjust.”

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“We were led to believe we’d have around a 5 percent chance [of being accepted],” Hunerwadel said. “I think private schools like Princeton have every right to decide which type of applications they accept, but they don’t have the right to make that decision after students have already applied.”

Harvard Dean of Admissions William Fitzsimmons wanted to emphasize that this was not an admissions decision, but one that was decided in the college dean’s office. He declined to comment further on the matter.

Aronson said that Princeton’s decision to not offer transfer admissions was made to avoid the kind of situation that occurred at Harvard.

“There was a sense that it would be inappropriate to have a transfer admission process — which could raise the hopes of many applicants — when the University might have room for only a handful,” she said.

Citing the growing number of freshman applicants each year and the high percentage of admitted students who accept their offers, Aronson said, “The University thought it was better to draw a little more heavily on the freshmen pool when space is available instead of conducting a transfer admission process that would yield few opportunities.”

While Rappaport said he would have appreciated the chance to transfer to Princeton, he recognized the reasoning behind the policy. “The nice thing about Princeton is you know off the bat that there’s no point in investing [in the school],” he said.

Christina Montrois, a junior at Tulane, was a visiting student at Princeton during the fall of her freshman year while her home school was closed for rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina.

“I really loved Princeton and was sad to leave,” Montrois said, “but I knew from the beginning that you can’t transfer [into Princeton] . . . they came up with a [temporary] transfer department on the whim just for us,” she explained.

Montrois said that Tulane students hosted by several universities expressed a desire to stay at their new schools. While some schools allowed their Tulane students to remain, Montrois said she was glad that Princeton did not make exceptions for her or the other 20 visiting students.

“The fact that they didn’t make exceptions [to the transfer-admissions policy] for us upheld their integrity and proved their commitment and dedication to helping Tulane rebuild by not taking away [its] students,” she said.

One student said that transferring into the University would be difficult, given the unique experience of each class year.

“We seem to have a culture that’s very based on whether you are a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior to an extent that a lot of other schools don’t,” Sean Rubin ’09 said.

Rubin, who is also a cartoonist for The Daily Princetonian, took a gap year to improve his application after initially being rejected by the University. With transferring to Princeton out of the question, Rubin’s decision to take time off and reapply was his last chance at attending the University.

Still, Rubin said he would not have transferred to the University from another school had he been given the option.

“Going to a liberal arts school all four years [is] a whole package. I wanted to be a part of something like that,” he said.

Rubin added that transferring to the University would cause a number of complications.

“If I were to transfer in as a junior, I can’t imagine having to scramble around to get advisers. Past sophomore year I think it would wind up being a pretty stressful situation,” he said.

Though she had already nearly completed her freshman fall at Brandeis, Hopen said, “I wouldn’t have wanted to start in the middle of the year, and I wouldn’t have wanted to start as a sophomore because I’ve really enjoyed every year that I’ve had here.”

Hopen said, though, that if the University had had a transfer process, she would rather have applied through that than lose her credits and apply with the general pool of freshmen.

Similarly, Montrois said that, though she loves Tulane, she would have taken advantage of a Princeton transfer-admissions process.

“Looking back on all of the really good and fun times I had at Princeton it makes me wish I could have prolonged them or maybe even stayed for the whole time,” she said.