if you are wondering about transferring schools and in particular looking to apply to one of those
super duper fancy exclusive schools um then this video is for you it's both about my experience
but more importantly the tips that i learned having gone through the whole you know shebang
in terms of my personal story i started off at nyu studying business and political economy through
the business school um in my first year i realized i didn't want to be in business school anymore
and so in my second year i applied to transfer i ended up going to harvard where i studied computer
science and philosophy this is not a video about like the pros and cons of either school this is
a video about transferring so let's get into that so some words of wisdom before we start the first
is that i only applied to schools i would rather go to so i only applied to i think five like super
super selective schools because it actually saved me time rather than applying to like 20 schools
some of which were probably equal in my head to the school that i was currently at um my second
phrase of wisdom which i think is the most important is that when i was writing every
application for each school i convinced myself that this was absolutely the perfect school for me
and i would love it and blah blah and so essentially it really helped me write my
application to be in that mindset and then as soon as i press submit i completely changed my attitude
such that i felt like if i stayed it would be amazing if i left it would be amazing too
in fact i even mentally had given myself a reward that if i didn't go to if i didn't transfer i
would get a cat and have an amazing apartment in new york et cetera and i think having that kind
of dual attitude and being able to convince yourself that you really want it and that is
going to totally be okay because it is is super super healthy throughout a very stressful process
okay so first i'm gonna go through the four reasons why i personally transferred and hopefully
they might inspire you or put some words to the feelings that you currently have which is
why you're watching this video um and then after that i'm going to go through tips on
what i think are good or bad things to write on your why do you want to transfer application essay
um huge disclaimer i'm by no means telling you to lie i'm also by no means telling you to be schemey
and lots of people ignore the rules that i'm going to say and get in because they're super authentic
and amazing at all these things but i do think they will be helpful in terms of being thoughtful
in terms of who is actually reading your application okay so to begin we're going to go
through the four reasons as to why i transferred the first is social which is that i didn't really
feel like i belonged to this like community in particular now in hindsight i would say i
didn't necessarily give a lot to the community and what can you really expect to get back in
that situation but regardless like that's how i felt at the time um the second was actually
financial nyu is a notoriously expensive school with bad financial aid according to everyone in
the us i'm canadian i didn't realize that um but with time i learned that ivs have really fantastic
financial aid programs so that was a consideration of mine um and then the third was actually the
environment so you know this is one of those nyu is one of those schools that's in the city and
this is amazing for lots of reasons and amazing for lots of people um but personally i felt
after having been there for a while i was like wow i can be an employee slash an adult for the rest
of my life if i really want to but like when am i going to be in a small liberal arts town
that's kind of isolated but get to really be a student in that environment so that was the third
consideration of mine um and then finally i as i said earlier did not want to be in business school
anymore long story but essentially i realized like the value of a liberal arts education
and i want to change what i studied so that was like the core reason as to why i transferred
okay so now we are going to go through tips on what i think are categorically good and
like categorically bad answers for your why do you want to transfer part of the application
again disclaimer this is not meant to be scheming i'm not telling you to lie
in fact being authentic and storytelling your personal story is the most important part of
this entire application but i do think you should think about who your reader is so in terms of like
categorically good answers i would say you've really thoughtfully considered for yourself in
relation to the school that you're applying to individually like why you want to go there so
for example let's say your freshman year you realize that like your passion was actually
psychology and you've been studying biology this whole time and your school's current school is not
that amazing in psychology but this other school that's amazing in psychology it has this professor
that wrote this book you really love you would love to write a thesis with them etc
that's like a categorically good reason to write on your application because you've shown that
you've thought about how you would fit in in that school and the reasons you want to transfer are in
that school's control and so a person from that school reading application is like ah
that makes a lot of sense what i would consider categorically bad answers probably just neglect
like the school that you're applying to and what your relation to them genuinely is okay
let me like ground that in an example if you go to a phenomenal writing program right now and
you're like i'm going to transfer to a school that is canonically known for having a worse or equal
writing program but it's more prestigious that's just probably like a categorically bad reason to
write on your transfer application in that it is outside of the school's control it does not show
that you've been thoughtful about why you want to attend that school and so that comes off now again
not saying you should lie i'm just saying you should consider who your reader is okay so now i'm
going to give four very specific pieces of advice for applying to the most competitive schools
out there to transfer to so my first piece of advice is that you should apply because you miss
100 of the shots you don't take according to a great canadian and this is so so true you will
regret not knowing what would happen had you done it so you should just do it with that being said
really acknowledge that at the end of it a lot of it is luck for example let's give some numbers um
when i was applying princeton that year was taking 12 transfer students most of the most competitive
schools so like harvard and yale and stanford and princeton take somewhere between like 10 and 30
students so very very few so anyways princeton was taking 12 half of them were saved for ex-military
in other words people who couldn't apply the first time around so this left six spots and let's say
there were 1500 applicants and let's say 150 of them were genuinely equally qualified those last
six spots come down to you know how people were feeling the day of and it's just a lot of luck
when it comes down to that final pool of most competitive people um all of that is to say 100
apply because you will regret not knowing at the same time acknowledge that it is totally a lot of
luck okay so my second piece of advice is kind of odd and anecdotal but i just want to communicate
that i have observed among many different transfer classes that they tend to be a little bit weirder
than like regular admissions what i just mean by that is if you think of a regular class
the schools are trying to fill like a whole breadth of people but after regular admissions
they've already filled that breadth of people they might not like need the tenth person who fits this
persona not that people are the same but you know there are personas um so all of that is to say
i've kind of just like noticed that transferred people tend to be a little bit weirder than the
average class as a whole this is not to say that you should lie and be weirder than you are but
perhaps this means that you should be even more authentic and more like strange in your own way
that might actually work to your favor in transfer applications to really really competitive schools
okay so my third piece of advice has sub tips but the overall tip is that you should write
your application as a personal narrative this is so so important for every application it is not a
resume it is not a list it is a narrative one of the reasons why this is great is because humans
are actually very very bad at remembering details but they are very good at remembering stories so
you might be wondering like how do you actually write like that um well i have very specific
subtips for this the first is show don't tell i added a lot of people's applications for fun for
like my friends and their siblings and things like that and one thing that i noticed is that it's
very very common for people to write something to the effect of you know i am a really passionate
learner or something like that the issue is let's say a thousand people write i am
a really passionate learner it is really hard for the person to who is reading it to understand why
this passionate learner is like more passionate or less passionate than this passionate learner
which is why if you can give a specific example aka showing it doesn't have to be impressive but
it will be so much more memorable because it is individual to you and it is a story and it just
explains so much more my second sub tip is just good for writing in general which is that if
you have the time you should actually go through word by word and see ask yourself you know is this
adding to the story if it's not take it out again i read applications all the time that have three
words that say effectively the same thing and so you're really wasting two of them and you're
taking away from the story so don't include it the third specific piece of advice for writing great
narratives is that you should have really researched the school that you want to transfer to
and have very specific answers as to why you would really fit in to that school in particular
so for example if you're asking yourself like you know why do i want to go to harvard
there are lots of answers that lots of people can say which are bad answers because again everyone
can say them but a good answer is like something very specific to you like oh you know i used to
love olives and i used to eat them with my dad when i was four and that led me to horticulture
which led me to biology in high school and then i read this paper by this harvard professor who
actually teaches the class in the spring semester that i would really love to attend like et cetera
et cetera as you can see i'm not saying anything particularly impressive like i'm not saying i won
the science olympiad but instead i'm telling a very specific story based on the research that
i've done for school which makes everything just so much more compelling and so much more memorable
my last sub tip is that when you're right editing slash more importantly when you're editing your
application you need to read it from the eyes of the people who are going to be reading your
application it is unbelievably easy to you know as you write your application just be like i want to
communicate this with the world but the issue is or what's not thoughtful about that is you need to
understand what you're coming across as to the people who are actually reading your application
and a really good way to do this again a few of the time is you can actually mark under every
paragraph that you've written for an application like what this communicates in a word or two
you're like oh this communicates my interest in science this paragraph communicates i care about
my family this paragraph communicates you know my my interest in biology in particular which
again i say that again in like paragraph six one of the great things about this is you're
just more thoughtful about how you actually come across and then second of all you can go through
an entire application and say have i covered and communicated everything i want to or are
the things that i'm missing that i actually want to add okay my fourth and final piece of advice is
use every single part of your application to your advantage because you will need it
in really really competitive processes so for example when it comes to your activities list
try your best to not make it just a resume of random things you should think about
am i telling some sort of a cohesive story am i saying oh i'm really interested in technology i'm
specifically supporting women am i saying i've always been interested in all of the sciences
um or are you just you know listing things that your parents made you do
also in your activities list or somewhere in your essay try and communicate the why you do things
there's just an enormous difference between people who have done things because they thought it was
the right thing to do or because other people told them to versus some intrinsic motivation
or some intrinsic values that you have that led you to the things that you did when it comes to
your recommendations obviously you wanted to be as good as possible i think two minor things that
helped mine was one on my transfer transcript there was room for teachers to write something
optional and one of my teachers very unprompted wrote something which i thought you know was
nice and then also i got an extra recommendation from one of my extracurricular uh leaders which
i think just corroborated a lot of things that i had been saying all along and i thought that
was very useful in your personal essays there is no such thing as a throwaway essay so for example
in my harvard app there was a question that was like what would you do if you didn't get in and
at first i essentially wrote one sentence that was you know i would stay thank you for asking this
great question and then i went back and actually wrote a thoughtful answer about you know what's
my philosophy on changing my life and what's my philosophy on what i would do if i stayed
um in other words i just made better use of those 500 words to actually communicate something and
finally in your interview if you get one or if you you know have one most of these really competitive
schools i believe say they don't do interviews i actually didn't have a couple um i think it kind
of depends on the school in the year but if you do have one you want to put your best foot forward
and so what i did was actually practice in front of a mirror this tells you a lot of things one it
shows you like the weird things you might do with your body without realizing it and then the other
thing is there are questions that you pretty much know you're going to be asked like tell me
about yourself or like tell me about this activity and while you should not have a memorized answer
you should know approximately where you're going with the answer because you have a lot of time to
think about it and then obviously if all the stars and moon aligns with all of these pieces of the
essay then you know that you've put your best foot forward and that's like the best that you can say
i'm going to read a little bit of my harvard essay it's really not that deep but i think
the meaning of this paragraph is there which is if i was accepted to harvard as i would sit on
harvard yard during graduation i would think to myself i would have not i would not have met a
and i would not accomplish b had the course of my life not been forever altered by transferring
but i also know that if i do not transfer i will meet x and i will accomplish y and the
course of my life would be altered just in a different way i think you know this
really well sums up my overall point which is you should apply like you mean it because otherwise
seriously like why are you going to spend the time and then once it's outside of your
hands it's totally fine and like takes solace in the fact that you are awesome you tried your best
and your life is going to be great regardless good luck you know i hope you learned something
from this and if you have more questions feel free to leave them in the comment section below