Advice on possibility of transferring to Northwestern

[clunkey]

Hi all
I called the admissions office at NW and they dont have 1L gpa statistics for the transfer students but they told me that every year they have 75-100 applications and about 20 people get in.
I'm at USC now and in top 15%. I was waitlisted at Northwestern last cycle. Any thoughts on my chances?

Thanks

[nate]

you should be fine. top 15% at USC...can i ask why you're only shooting for northwestern? i think you'd stand good chance at columbia or nyu.

[clunkey]

I love USC but I really want to be in Chicago. So that is why I am only shooting for Northwestern.

[nate]

you want to end up in chicago, or you want to go to school in chicago for the next couple years? if the former, columbia and nyu are probably going to get you farther in the chicago market than even northwestern.

uchicago on the other hand would be your best bet. are you applying there? they don't take a lot of transfers, and i believe they usually go for top 10%, but the fact that you're transferring from a school in the top20 (whereas most transfers are coming from much lower ranked schools) is going to give you a lot of weight.

i think the higher ranked schools love to have transfers on record from other prestigious schools. word is around my school that you can transfer to georgetown even at a relatively low rank for transferring (i've heard as low as top 30-40%).

and as far as northwestern, i'd give it a 95% chance.

[shaz]

would i have a chance for nw coming from a low tier 2?  how high in the class would i need to be?

[nate]

i would think so, but you should probably be at least top 10%. it's hard to say with northwestern because their transfer classes are relatively small. in your spot the best and surest option among the t14 is GULC. they take a crazy amount of transfer students; but then again it all depends on what your gpa actually is.

if i was top 10% at a tier 2, i'd probably apply to every t14 school (aside from YHS) just to see what happens. it would suck to have that kind of opportunity and never know about it.

i might even consider some t25's, but those aren't as "national" so it's harder to say a transfer is worth it, especially if you're on top at your current school in a location you want to be at.