Transferring into the Ivy League is notoriously difficult, and Harvard isn’t shy about letting prospective transfers know how unlikely it is for them to get in.
Harvard accepts an average of 12 transfer students each year out of more than 1,500 applicants, which is an acceptance rate of less than 1%. And most students who are thinking of transferring to Harvard aren’t even eligible for consideration. If you’re thinking Harvard is where you want to be, first you need to:
Have completed a year of college, but no more than two years (so typically this means applying in your sophomore year)
Have been a full-time student for that year
Be coming from a school with a similar liberal arts curriculum.
If you aren’t taking a wide variety of classes illustrative of your ability to succeed in a liberal arts environment (this includes science, English, humanities, history, and a foreign language), your application won’t even be read.
Harvard looks for students who have had an exceptional academic experience in college so far, building on an equally impressive high school resume. They expect strong faculty recommendations (yes, you need to be making connections with Professors even though you plan on leaving), and they want to see a “clearly defined academic need to transfer.” Simply wanting to be at Harvard isn’t good enough. Harvard needs to be able to offer you something — other than prestige — that you can’t access at your current institution.
A few years ago, a student contacted us because he was hoping to transfer to the Ivy League. We are very selective about who we take on as transfer clients, and were initially wary. When a student is so certain that the Ivy League is where they should be — and they aren’t there already — that’s a potential red flag. But then we heard this student’s story. Let’s call him Ben.
Ben was an exceptional student in high school with the grades, the activities, and the leadership positions to make him a strong contender for an Ivy League or Ivy-caliber school. But then life happened. Ben’s grandfather got sick and moved in with his family, and his parents started relying on him to help with his younger siblings. Instead of envisioning a collegiate experience at his dream school, Ben had to find a school close enough to home that he could commute every day.
A year later, his family had regained footing. They didn’t need him at home, but he feared that he’d lost his only chance at the kind of school he’d worked so hard to get into.
When we met Ben, we knew he was a great transfer applicant for Harvard because he had the grades, he had the story, and he wanted to study something his current school didn’t offer. He’d ended up at his current college out of convenience, not because it was the right fit.
Working with Ben on his essay, we made sure that he conveyed the complexity of his situation back when he was a high school senior, while also giving ample weight to how he’d grown as a student, community member, and man.
We didn’t need to convince Harvard that he was qualified — his grades did that.
Instead, we needed the essay to show that he was exceptional.
In the end, it paid off.
If you’re considering applying to Harvard as a transfer, first you need to accept the statistical unlikeliness that this gambit will pay off. Then, look into retaking the SAT or ACT unless your scores were perfect, and lean into building relationships with professors in the field you’d like to pursue who could write recommendations that would make the case for you as a student as well as for the academic needs you have that only Harvard can provide.
You should also reach out to us. If you’re applying to Harvard, you consider yourself one of the best students in the country…but that’s doesn’t mean you’re the best at getting into Harvard. We are. Every year, we help students gain acceptance to the best schools in the world.
If you are considering a transfer, send us an email. We help students like you defy transfer statistics to find their dream school.