More colleges put out welcome mat for transfer students

Amanda DuPont could sense right away that something was wrong. In the first weeks of her freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, she began to question if she had chosen the right school for her.

"I was unhappy, and then I didn't do well in my classes. And that made me even more unhappy," she recalled. "It felt crazy, spending all that money for something that didn't feel right."

DuPont, now 22, transferred to the University of Minnesota as a sophomore and graduated last spring.

She's part of a sharp uptick in the number of students who transfer colleges. A 2012 survey by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that one-third of all U.S. college students switch institutions before they earn their diploma, and a quarter of those change schools more than once.

It wasn't always like that.

"Frankly, some colleges in the past didn't like these students," said Janet Marling, director of the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students at the University of North Georgia. "They might have been wary about why it didn't work out at their first school, or saw a lot of complexity in enrolling them. Transfer students need to be treated differently, and not every school has been prepared for that."

Now transfer students are being courted.

Transfer students make up an ever-larger portion of the University of Minnesota's student body. A 2012 ranking by U.S. News & World Report put the Twin Cities campus in the nation's top 50 for the number of transfers. About half of the U's recent graduates arrived after transferring.

The university has stepped up its efforts to connect with this growing segment of the student body, adding transfer orientation, transfer admissions counselors, transfer student ambassadors and a special day of activities to welcome them.

"When they come to transfer-specific orientation, it's a comfort," said Heidi Meyer, the university's senior director of transfer admissions. "They meet students who are in the same boat. There's one transition from high school to college; it's different college to college."

Students transfer for many reasons. The most common switch is from community college to a four-year institution. Students also transfer because they change majors, want to be closer to a love interest or home, decide that they need a different-sized school or experience a change in finances.

But college admissions officers say a significant portion of students transfer after concluding that their first college is simply a bad fit.

The malaise that prompts some college students to transfer doesn't surprise Barry Schwartz. A psychology professor at Swarthmore College, Schwartz authored the groundbreaking book "The Paradox of Choice." His research supports a counterintuitive theory: Too many options can actually create dissatisfaction with a final decision.

"There aren't substantially more colleges than there used to be, but it feels like there are more," he said. "Students can get vast amounts of information about places where they're not going. Then no matter where they go, they can imagine how much better it would have been if they would have gone somewhere else.

"It's very easy to compare the choice you made with the choice you didn't make and feel unhappy, especially when things aren't going well."

Today's high-tech college recruitment, with virtual campus tours and interactive websites, gives prospective students an unprecedented window into their postsecondary options. Schwartz said that can undermine the selection process.

"The idea that you could go to college anywhere in the country or even anywhere in the world is fairly new," he added. "What were once choices in principle are now choices in fact. Entire families get obsessed with finding the perfect school, and that can be a setup for disappointment."

"Looking for the best is a colossal mistake. Looking for good enough should be the strategy," he said "Looking for the best keeps the search going for options that could theoretically be superior. That chase never ends."

Staying put has financial rewards. Credits don't always transfer from one college to the next, which can delay graduation — and when calculating the cost of higher education, time is most certainly money.

"It can be a challenge to get credits from the first college to count toward a degree. A lot of schools, when asked, say, 'Yes, we will accept your credits.' But sometimes that means they will apply them as electives, not as coursework for the degree," Marling warned. "You need to have those specific conversations."

Before considering a transfer, she said, students should be able to spell out what they're seeking that their current school lacks.

"Students should ask themselves if what's troubling them and making them want to transfer is something about that particular situation, or is it something that might be true at another institution," Marling advised. "If you have a student who is homesick, say, or has trouble making connections, or isn't academically prepared, they might find it's the same story at their next stop."