Hello and welcome to my new Her Campus page! I just transferred to Barnard this fall for my sophomore year, but this isn’t my first time writing for HC. I was a member at my previous school, Kenyon College, and you can read my articles here. Because these last six-plus months have been a bit chaotic, to say the least, I wanted to start off my new page with a more personal piece than I usually write.
First of all, why did I want to transfer in the first place? Long story short, Kenyon was just a bad fit for me on so many levels. I was only there for three months last fall during extremely restrictive COVID times, but it was apparent to me from early on that I would certainly have intense struggles there. First of all, it was a tiny college located in a tiny town (less than 2,000 people) in the middle of Ohio. Kenyon and the town of Gambier were surrounded by cornfields and Trump supporters, and it lacked basic student resources, such as a proper grocery store within walking distance, a campus health center open more than 40 hours a week, decent vegetarian food, and a library or decent study space. The school administration clearly only cared about making money, frequently ignoring the needs of the student body in too many incidents to count that year. I can count on one hand the number of friends I managed to make in the high school-esque, cliquey social environment, and a majority of them transferred for their sophomore years as well! No, I wasn’t there during a normal year, and things may have been different had I been, but I just couldn’t give myself the benefit of the doubt. As soon as I landed at home in Alaska for Thanksgiving break, I felt at peace with staying home for the rest of the school year, as everyone had to finish the semester online, and all classes but mine would return in the spring. I couldn’t even begin to imagine going back to Kenyon, so I knew that I should begin my list of schools that I might want to apply to. You just have to realize that when you’re taking things one day, one hour at a time a change needs to happen.
I didn’t have a college counselor or tutor for either of my application processes, so I had to navigate them with just my family to lean on, but at least the freshman year one was pretty clear. Transfer applications are a mess of dates, and things such as universal commitment dates don’t exist. So I didn’t have a clear timeline of recommendations for when to write my essays, collect transcripts and letters of recommendation, and fill out the myriad of forms that were required. I decided that I’d try to write all my essays over winter break, since they were the most intensive, and take care of everything else in the couple of months until applications were due (between February 15th and March 15th). I narrowed it down to six schools, instead of the sixteen that I applied to last time, and stuck to my timeline pretty well (although I did keep polishing some essays until the night they were due). It was really strange to have to ask professors who I’d only had for one semester to write letters of recommendation for me, and knowing that the admissions offices would only have that semester of grades to evaluate my performance in college classes didn’t feel right due to the crazy circumstances.
Nevertheless, I went through the application process from December to March. It was strenuous, but such a relief when I got everything turned in. I think my essays were a lot better that round — if there’s any benefit to applying all over again, one is certainly that it’s a chance to improve upon your writing. But that isn’t to say that the process was easy, because some colleges still required test scores (even though it was really hard to retake them if you weren’t satisfied with your high school scores), and part of the Common Application was a “Midterm Report” that they needed all of your professors to sign. Being more than 2,000 miles away meant that I couldn’t just go by their offices to ask them to sign the form, so I had to figure out how to make an online version of it using my mom’s work subscription to DocuSign. Needless to say, colleges didn’t put as much effort into making their transfer applications more equitable as they did for their first-year applications.
I started receiving decisions in late April, and it didn’t all go well. The two schools that had been at the top of my list since junior year rejected me again, but their transfer acceptance rates were 4% and 2%, so I guess it all just came down to luck. However, I was overjoyed to be accepted at Barnard, as I really didn’t think I would get in. But I had no idea how I was going to choose between it and an offer from another East Coast school, so I booked a last-minute trip to New York, with a day to take the train up to Connecticut. I ended up choosing Barnard because of its city location and academic connections with Columbia, and I’m so glad that I did. There were still deterrents for Barnard, like the fact that I won’t have campus housing my junior and senior years, but overall it’s been a good fit. In the end, I’m really glad that I transferred, and although it was a hard decision and process, it was worth it in the end. This, like a lot of things throughout the pandemic, was about trusting your gut and thinking about the big picture of your future.