“I opened it, and I screamed,” recalls Avital Dayanim ’20, reflecting on the day she learned of her acceptance as a mid-year transfer to the University. “The people who lived below me probably thought that there was a stampede going on in the dorm.”

Dayanim is one of a small cohort of second-semester transfer students who came to the University in the spring of 2018.

Nearly one in eight students who start college in any fall term transfer to a different institution by the following fall, according to a 2017 survey conducted by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The University welcomes approximately 75 transfer students every year, with the majority of students starting in the fall semester. This year, the group of new students consists of 10 transfer students and two exchange students from other universities.

This semester’s group of transfers, similar to those of past years, comes from a variety of backgrounds and institutions. The deadline for the application for spring transfer students was Nov. 1,  and acceptances came out in the middle of December. With classes starting on Jan. 24, spring 2019 transfer Chase Ames ’22 expressed that this left a small window of time for students to weigh their options, commit to a school, prepare to transfer, and settle into a new campus. 

“The time crunch can make people make rash decisions,” Ames said. Ames explained that she almost committed to a different university shortly before she received her acceptance to Wesleyan but ultimately felt that it did not deter her from making the decision to transfer in the spring.

While for some the pressure of choosing between multiple schools when transferring might make the decision process even more nerve-wracking, Skyler Cummings ’22, another spring 2019 transfer, said that once she heard back from the University, her choice was clear.

“I just felt settled,” she said.

But even still, there were factors that made Cummings hesitant to transfer institutions. She explained that the prospect of losing a school’s name and reputation is enough to make leaving feel like a risk.  

“I asked myself if I really wanted to give up my [.edu] email address—there were so many opportunities that seemed to come along with being a student at [this school],” Cummings said.

Other hurdles can make students hesitant, as well. The college application process in high school, as many students are likely to remember, is a time-consuming one, involving teachers, overbearing parents, get-to-know-me surveys from college guidance counselors, and endless hours devoted to the Common Application. When it comes to transferring, there are fewer resources provided to applicants: no candy-filled college guidance counselor’s office to cry in, no commiserating with fellow classmates who are also going through the process, and no parent there to hold your hand through it all. The stress of going through the entire process a second time might make students try to stick it out at their institutions.

Beckett Azevedo ’21, who loved being part of a cappella and theater at his previous university, recalls feeling like he wanted to put everything into making things work on his old campus. He eventually realized that sometimes giving your all to making things work won’t make a place feel like home. He remembers that when he visited the University last semester, he felt at home quite quickly. 

“I was out with my hosts, and people were just talking about theater,” Azevedo said, noting that simple things like the layout of a school can make all the difference when it comes to creating a sense of community. “If I were to take everyone from [my old school] and put them in Usdan, I’m sure I would run into people and feel at home much more.”

While transfer students who arrive in the fall go through orientation alongside the incoming first years, spring transfers experience the transition slightly differently.

“We arrived on campus and had lunch with staff members [from religious life, Psafe, BonAppetit, etc.], and I felt very optimistic about the transition because so many [staff members] showed up,” recalls Ames, who also remembers that after moving in, the group had dinner with peer advisors who provided information to make transitioning into the academic and social world at the University easier.

And while all in all most of the spring transfers seem very happy with the orientation process, the University has yet to fix the problem of pre-registration for spring transfers. While the rest of the student body finishes pre-registration at the end of the fall semester, spring transfer students—who do not even know they are coming here in spring—are not so lucky. Left to the chaos of drop/add, trying to find seats in overly-packed classrooms, many students find the process inaccessible and intimidating. Some of the spring transfer students have been unable to get into classes that they will need to declare a major and will therefore not be able to start fulfilling major requirements until the beginning of their junior year.

Despite these challenges, this year’s transfers had to think deeply about what the college experience can really give a student. These students took a risk in uprooting their lives to come to a new place where people could very well already be set in their friendships and routines. Luckily, the University’s transfer community and greater student body seem to be doing a good job assuaging those fears. Dayanim remembers her first day of classes last spring, when she was approached by a peer who had also transferred in the spring and instantly introduced her to her friends, many of whom had also transferred. She was welcomed with open arms.

Eitana Friedman-Nathan can be reached at efriedmannat@wesleyan.edu.