Overheard in Committee: Transfer Edition
Admit It! transfers: you’ve been clamoring for your own edition of the Overheard in Committee blog. Committees aren’t just about freshman applicants right? So here it is, live from today’s committee meeting.
Overheard in Transfer Committee: “I like that he applied again.”
There may be a perception out there among prospective students that a rejection is a black mark on your application file; that is so not the case. We absolutely appreciate a student’s sincere and continued interest in attending William & Mary. Students might re-apply as transfer applicants a year after applying to W&M for freshman admission or they may initially apply as a transfer student, be denied or waitlisted, and then re-apply after taking additional college classes. This does not bother us in the least, assuming the student has worked to improve his/her record between applications.
We actually saw several cases of repeat applicants in today’s committee. Some of the cases we reviewed were students who were denied or waitlisted as freshman applicants and who have now applied as transfer students. Because our freshman application process is so competitive, oftentimes these students were academically sound but simply not stand-outs as high school seniors. In other cases, the student maybe had some academic flaws as a highschooler but has really turned it on academically in college (that’s why they have the term late bloomers right?). And yet in other cases we might have admitted the student as a freshman applicant but the student chose to enroll elsewhere. Now that person believes their current institution to be a bad fit and is interested in again exploring the opportunity to attend W&M. Yet others are students who previously applied as transfers. Many times they have contacted our transfer dean after being previously denied or waitlisted and received advice on how to improve their record (be it specific courses we wanted to see them take or an improvement in grades) and have heeded that advice splendidly.
In all of these cases, not once did we bemoan the fact that a student we had previously not admitted was applying again. It’s a good thing for any college/university to enroll students who are passionate about the institution and excited to attend. Continued interest is oftentimes also a sign of good research during the search process. These students know that W&M is the right fit so much so that they are willing to go through the process of transferring which is not an easy task (completing an application, transitioning from one community to another, etc.). This is not to say that everyone who re-applies is admitted. Sometimes academic records decline enormously once a student enters college. In other instances there are personal/social/disciplinary issues that develop that make that student less desirable than they would have been previously. But on the whole we sincerely appreciate any student’s continued interest in W&M and never treat that as a reason to be negative towards his/her application.
Stay tuned for the sequel to the transfer edition of the Overheard in Committee blog series.
Wendy Livingston ’03, M.Ed. ’09
Senior Assistant Dean of Admission
Comments are closed on posts older than one year, but we still want to hear from you. If you have a comment or question for us, please email admission@wm.edu.
Thank you for commenting on the transfer admissions! I’ve been anxiously awaiting this coming Saturday for the big news and hearing what the committee is talking about helps. Now just a few more days…
Any time Christy. I hope to post a sequal to thise blog today or tomorrow and a blog about transfer decisions on Friday.
So decisions will come out Friday?
Alice, we don’t have an exact date/time for transfer decisions yet. The blog will be posted on Friday regardless of when decisions are emailed. We do promise that the emails will be sent by May 1 but we won’t know exactly when we’re sending the emails until just before we send them. The Committee process is a very fluid one and not one that can easily have an end date/time.
I know this is an extremely weird question (and probably one you might not even be able to answer), but do you know what percent of transfer students who use the reopen application are usually admitted? I know the overall transfer acceptance rate is around 45%, but I didn’t know if the acceptance rate for reopen applicants was higher.
Unfortunately we do not keep statistics on the admit rate for reopens specifically.
Is there a possibility we could find out decisions tomorrow?
Are decisions always sent later in the day?
Alison, we truly do not know yet when emails will be sent. We have to conclude committee and then prepare the emails to be sent so we really won’t know when the emails will be sent until they’re ready to go. It’s hard to put a timeline on how long committee will take and how long it will take to prepare the emails. They will be out by May 1 at the latest though so the wait isn’t too much longer.
Any updates on when deciaions will be released?
while the wait is absolutely killing me, I want to say thanks to the committee because I know it means our applications are getting the individual attention they deserve 🙂
Sadly no updates yet. We truly will not know when they are being emailed until just before we hit send.
Thank you so much William and Mary for giving us such a great insight into how our application is being reviewed. Also, thank you for all your hard work these past couple of months… Can’t wait to hear the decision.
You’re most welcome Connor. The sequal to this blog should be up shortly! Enjoy