This website has previously discussed how transferring schools can impact your educational costs and student debt burden. Indeed, some schools offer financial aid to transfer students, and the cost of attending a new school may be significantly less than attending the school which a student originally attended. In addition, a new school may have a lower cost of living, which can impact your bottom line. Even though transferring schools can be a major life decision, as I know from firsthand experience, minimizing the impact of transferring schools can be accomplished in certain circumstances.
Do Your Research
When minimizing the impact of transferring schools it is important to do your research. Transfer students often wish to secure housing on short notice since transfer students usually learn of an admissions decision only a few months before the academic semester begins. On-campus housing can be expensive and some students may wish to live off campus in order to have more space and other amenities. As a result, transfer applicants should have a few housing options on their radar so that they have a place to live if they are accepted into a school.
Moreover, it is important to submit all financial aid and other student loan paperwork on time to the school to which an individual wishes to transfer. Schools have varying deadlines and paperwork that they need to submit, so it is important to ensure that you understand the paperwork that needs to be submitted. In addition, it is important that the school to which you transfer is on the same page as you about loan documents that need to be submitted in order for the school to be paid money to cover educational costs.
Academic Information
Another important part of minimizing the impact of transferring schools is to ensure that you do not miss out on academic opportunities because you transferred schools. For instance, in law school, there is often a write-on competition to determine who will be invited to join a journal on campus. Becoming an editor of a journal is a big honor and can help with a law graduate’s job search. Many law schools permit transfer students to participate in the write-on competition in order to be considered for journals, but submissions must often be made under tight timeframes. As a result, it is important to ensure you understand all of the deadlines involved so that you do not miss out on opportunities.
Moreover, it may also be important for students to choose academic advisors as soon as possible before professors are filled to capacity with mentees. As such, transfer students may wish to reach out to potential advisors as soon as practical to ensure that you do not miss out on opportunities. In addition, it is important for transfer students to get a good sense of the requirements of the academic discipline they hope to pursue so they can select classes that will count toward their chosen field.
Transfer Credit
Another important part of minimizing the impact of transferring schools is to determine how much transfer credit you will be granted at your new school. Certain schools may refuse to transfer some of your academic credit from the school from which you transferred. This may be due to the fact that the other school does not offer similar courses or the course was taken through the internet or other remote means.
It can be extremely expensive to retake courses while working toward a degree, and accordingly, it is important to ensure that you will be granted transfer credit at your new school. Generally, the registrar’s office of your new school may be able to answer questions about how much credit may be transferred. It is important to reduce the amount of coursework you may need to repeat to avoid borrowing additional money to finance a degree.
Social Networking
When minimizing the impact of transferring schools, it is important that an individual finds a new social network at their new school. People naturally form social bonds with people at their old schools because they spent quality time of their lives with students at those institutions. It can be hard to leave those contacts behind and to forge new friendships and connections at a new school.
In order to forge new social connections, it is usually important to be involved with on-campus activities. For instance, I made sure to be involved with religious and other communal activities on the campus of my new school so that I could seamlessly transition into the fabric of my new school. In addition, I also made sure to connect with other transfer students because the commonality of the experiences we all shared made it easy for us to forge social connections. Moreover, I also connected with people I knew from my past in the city to which I moved to transfer schools. In this way, I ensured that I was socially acclimated to my new environment, and I had a more meaningful transfer experience because of these contacts.
All told, transferring law schools can be an important way to secure additional financial assistance and lower your educational expenses through cost of living differences and other benefits. However, it is important to take some critical steps to most impact your bottom line, ensure that your studies will not be interrupted, and be socially acclimated after transferring schools.