I am currently a freshman at a state university. Unfortunately, I do not like the university I am attending and I am not happy where I am. Therefore, I am looking to transfer to another college or university so I will start at a new institution in my sophomore year.
I want to transfer primarily for academic reasons. The university I am currently attending offers a majors in engineering, the field which intend to study. I specifically want to study Biomedical Engineering. Unfortunately for me, my university’s Chemical Engineering department is very strong while their Biomedical Engineering department is very weak and underdeveloped. So much so that there is no undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering that is even offered. Rather, there is an undergraduate degree offered in Chemical Engineering, for example, and one can specialize in Biomedical Engineering underneath this degree. In othe words, Biomedical Engineering is not offered as its own major.
After reading the content above, you are probably thinking, if this university doesn’t offer the major you are looking for, then why on Earth did you choose to attend? The answer to this is that I applied to six colleges and universities for freshman admission and was only accepted to two of them; one being the university I currently go to and the other being a very small liberal arts college. This small liberal arts college I was accepted to did not have an engineering program, and since I intend to major in engineering, I decided that this specific liberal arts college was not the right fit for me. So, the only alternative to that was attending the university I currently am enrolled in because it was the only one I had been accepted to and it actually had an engineering program.
Other reasons why I want to transfer include:
-The current university l I attend has an EXTREMELY large student body. Therefore, I would like to transfer to a medium sized institution that does have as many people.
-I am in a STEM organization that claims to encourage female engagement in STEM fields. The organization at my university claims to support female students majoring in STEM fields by helping us gain research positions on campus and teach us professional development and how to build meaningful relationships with mentors and so on.
Just to give a little bit of background before I continue: although I am only a freshman in college, I spent this past summer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and conducted research at their School of Medicine for ten weeks in an Immunology lab. Throughout this time, along with conducting research in the laboratory and learning a lot of valuable skills, I also had the pleasure of being able to attend professional development workshops which taught me about everything from professional communication and how to make and present a poster at a research symposium to how to put together an application for graduate school, among other things. I learned a lot during my time at UNC and was able to develop a very close relationship with my mentors in the laboratory in which I worked.
So, coming into this fall semester at my current university, the director of the STEM organization I am a part of talked to the other members and I about research opportunities on campus. She then proceeded to tell us that she supported whatever research we wanted to do in whichever lab we chose to do it in on campus. I then asked her if we could start research in this fall semester or if we had to wait until the spring. She said we all had to wait until the spring. Her decision does not sit well with me because I am a very eager and driven person who loves to learn and explore science and engineering. It is a disappointment that she said we cannot start our research projects until the spring semester. For this reason, I want to transfer to a university that will allow me to engage in research immediately and one that will not set restrictions on when I can start participating in undergraduate research. I want to explore in college, not be limited.
-I do not connect socially or intellectually with the other members of the STEM organization I am a part of. Although there have been a lot of instances where I realized this was the case, one stood out to me in particular. The other day, the other girls in the organization and I were talking about why we chose to attend the university we all currently go to. They all said they chose this university because they all thought "they would rather be the smartest one at a university where everyone else is dumber than them than go to (their other choice school) and be the dumbest one there surrounded by people who are smarter than them.”
Their remarks left a bad taste in my mouth. My opinion is completely the opposite of theirs. I would LOVE to be attending a university where there are a lot of people I am surrounded by who are smarter than I am. That way, I could learn from them and be inspired every day to push myself and be the best version of myself. One of my mantras is; if you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.
-The current university I attend has EXTREMELY large classes. Therefore, the professor does not give each student individual attention. I am going to go to office hours and help sessions, I am going to ask the professor questions, and I am going to sit in the front row in class and participate. But I do not think that will be enough. I want to be at a university that values the student academically and individually. I want to go to a school where I am more than just a number to a professor.
-The current university I attend is a big party school. I know that there are parties at every college and university no matter where I go, but I want to go to a university that values education and their student body more than they do parties.
-The current university I attend is not very accepting of people they view as “different”. I am visually impaired and travel with a cane when I walk around campus. Whenever I have asked someone passing by me for directions, they always say “its over there”. I then proceed to tell them I am visually impaired and explain to them that I do not know where “there” is. After telling them this, everybody I have asked for directions (and I have asked a LOT of people) have either rolled their eyes and given me a dirty look, responded by saying “its that way”, have either told me, “you can’t see that white building over there?”, or have just walked away. I know I will encounter people who are like this no matter where I go, but I want to go to a university that is more inclusive and that celebrates the diversity and differences that each student contributes to their campus. I want to be included and feel like I belong.
All of this is what led me to making the decision to transfer universities. The only problem is, I do not know where to start. I am looking for universities to transfer to but all I am finding are ranking lists and “Top 25” lists of colleges. My first question is, given what I mentioned above about what I want in a school, how do I find one that matches this criteria?
And once I do find one, I need some help with the transfer application process, which is why I posted this thread on College Confidential, because I am confident that there will be people here who can help me with this.
I know this post is very long, I apologize for writing a lot. I wanted to give whoever is reading this a good idea of my circumstances right now instead of being very vague and unclear. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I appreciate your time, effort, ad help. :)
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