Experience with Transfers?

[wheatthinners]

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[WildZoo]

I don't have any experience with transfers other than hearing from others that they are difficult to do, and in general you shouldn't go to a school with the expectation that you will be able to transfer to another.
But I am wondering why you bothered applying to these schools if you did not actually want to go to them.

 

[wheatthinners]

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[DVMDream]

1. Transfers are not a guarantee. Do NOT attend a school with the plan on transferring later on. Plan on being at whichever school you accept for 4 years.

2. As far as how "legitimate" reasons need to be, I can't say. Financial is probably not going to do it. Family having health problems can be considered a good reason. Hating the school you are at, is not a good reason. Bottom line is that no matter the reason, the curriculum at the school you are at and the one you are transferring to have to reasonably match up, which can be very difficult to do.

3. How often spots open up will vary from school to school and year to year. It is possible that a spot is never open. It is also possible that there is an open spot, but there are a number of other students applying to transfer into that one spot.

The take away here needs to be that if you attend a vet school, you need to be ready to commit to that school for all 4 years, if you can't, then don't attend.

Transferring is possible, but not easy.

ETA: This is coming from someone who has gone through the transfer process.

 

[jmo1012]

possible but not easy as others have said. you should maybe ask these 2 schools if they even take transfers (some schools dont). seems like they tend to take family into account when looking at transfers, but i suspect there are multiple people apply when a spot opens up, because you have island students that would prefer to be back in the US as well. schools may not have an open spot come the end of the year, and they dont have to fill that spot if they dont like any of the candidates. people who successfully transferred from SGU had some of the very top grades to be competed against

 

[KCgophervet]

I have heard of students getting "lucky" enough to transfer but then having to repeat a year because the curriculums didn't match. So essentially, they paid for an extra year of tuition. Not exactly ideal.

 

[DVMDream]

I have heard of students getting "lucky" enough to transfer but then having to repeat a year because the curriculums didn't match. So essentially, they paid for an extra year of tuition. Not exactly ideal.

Yup, this can happen too. I had to do a LOT of digging and work to show that my curriculum had covered everything that the other school's curriculum had also already covered... it took a couple of weeks to get it all sorted out.

 

[wheatthinners]

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[DVMDream]

Yeah I actually plan on phoning into the admissions for those 2 schools to see which schools they would be willing to accept transfers from, curriculum-wise so I won't end up repeating stuff. And yeah I've looked at the websites for those 2 schools and they do accept transfers when spots open up.

I'm still waiting on decisions for a few schools too, so I'll call in when it's all finalized. I don't have any strong inclination for any of the schools I've been accepted to or are waiting for decisions from, so worst case scenario, I'll just suck it up for 4 years.

Do you mind if I ask where you transferred to and from, and what your reasons were? If that's a bit too personal, that's cool. Thanks for your insight anyways!

Schools probably aren't going to have a list of all the schools that they will accept transfers from. They aren't inclined to keep up to date on other schools' curricula and how everything compares to their curriculum... you will have to do that research. Most schools have their curriculum posted on their website, you will have to do a compare/contrast to the best of your ability.

I transferred from Edinburgh to a school in the US (this will remain unstated).

I transferred for a variety of reasons but the top two were: 1. Family health problems. 2. My own personal health problems.

 

[hedgehogcatcher]

Do keep in mind you need at least a 3.0 to transfer most places, and better to be competitive. That's hard work to get- it's not at all a low gpa in vet school... so be prepared!