Is it too late to change Colleges?

Question

If you're 22 years old???
What is your opinion? = )

Answer 1

Your age should not pose any problems, and you are welcome to change colleges at any time in your life that you feel it will benefit you. However, if you are too far along in your program, it can cause problems. Most schools have residency requirements which state that you must take the last 30 or more units at their institution in order to graduate from there, so if you are currently a senior about to graduate, and you wanted to change to a different college, you might have to take an additional year or so of classes in order to be able to graduate from the new school.

Also, many people think they can transfer in order to graduate from a more prestigious school which they could not originally afford to do so. I don't know if this is your goal, but at one point in my doctoral program I taught at a local college where many of the students, all of whom were first-generation college students, had been told by their parents, "If you go to this inexpensive school for 3 years, we will pay for you to transfer to the expensive, prestige school across town for your senior year so that you can get your degree from there." What none of them realized is that the prestige school would never have admitted anyone transferring from a lesser school like that. Most schools, other than taking community college transfers after two years, would only take transfers from better, not lesser, schools.

Answer 2

How long have you been at your current college? Where are you thinking about transferring? Are you staying with the same major? Are your credits transferable? Will transferring add any more years onto your stay at college? Can you get scholarships at your new college? Is tuition more? Do you have the money?

I've had two cousins who both went to three different colleges (transferring after freshman year and sophomore year). One finished late (money problems) and the other (who is starting her junior year) is still on track to graduate in a year and a half (her traditional graduation date).

One major thing to look at when transferring is credit transfers, I've had friends who transferred after one year at another college and had to start over because all of their old credits didn't transfer to their new college. It's especially hard when transferring from/into private colleges.

Before transferring, I'd ask yourself the questions above, and then decide.