Transfer Student Program

We are pleased that you are considering an application to Yale. Yale College welcomes a small number of transfer students each year. An applicant for transfer admission should have both an excellent academic record and particularly compelling academic reasons for wishing to attend Yale. Candidates to the transfer program should be aware that transfer admission is considerably more competitive than freshman admission.

Transfer students enter either the sophomore or junior year and must enroll full-time at Yale for a minimum of two years (four terms) in order to qualify for the B.A. or B.S. degree. The Admissions Committee meets once a year in the spring to consider all candidates for the coming academic year. Students offered transfer admission may not defer admission to another entrance date. The Committee places primary emphasis on your college record, reasons for transfer, and recommendations from college faculty and administrators. Your secondary school record, extracurricular interests, and work experience are also given weight.

Admissions

The admissions staff considers each application individually and tries to get as full a sense of the applicant as possible. There are no cut offs for GPAs or test scores, but it may be helpful to note that the average college GPA for admitted transfer students has been 3.8 and above. Keep in mind that admission to the transfer program is extremely competitive. Yale College receives between 700 and 800 transfer applications, and admits between 24 to 35 candidates per year, reflecting an admissions rate of only 3% to 5%. For more detailed information about transfer admissions, please read the section on Who Makes a Good Transfer Applicant?.

Frequently Asked Questions

Additional Resources

Tuition and Financial Aid

Tuition for the 2008-2009 academic year is $35,300. Financial aid is available to U.S. citizens and permanent residents as well as to international students. Financial aid is awarded solely on the basis of financial need. Click here for more information about financial aid at Yale. If you plan to apply for financial aid, you must submit the information and forms listed in the section “For Financial Aid Applicants” on the Application instructions. (See under "How to Apply" for a downloadable copy of these instructions.)

Housing and Residential College Affiliation

Although transfer students are not guaranteed housing on campus, every effort is made to find housing for them in one of the twelve residential colleges. Even if a student is not living on campus, he/she is affiliated with a Yale residential college.

Academic Requirements

To earn a Yale undergraduate degree, students must successfully complete a total of thirty-six term courses. At least eighteen of them must be earned at Yale. They must also complete the requirements of a major program in Yale College and fulfill the distributional requirements for the bachelor’s degree, which include the foreign language requirement. As many as eighteen course credits earned at another college or university may be transferred toward the requirement for the degree. Credit will be awarded for academic courses that were taken at an accredited post-secondary institution and that were similar in content to Yale College courses. Grades of A or B are expected. No more than one-quarter of courses accepted for transfer toward the requirements for the degree may have grades of C. Students in the Eli Whitney Students Program are governed by the Academic Regulations of Yale College and by the rules explained in the publication Undergraduate Regulations.

Distributional Requirements

Students must fulfill disciplinary area requirements by taking no fewer than two course credits in the humanities and arts, two in the sciences, and two in the social sciences. Students must also fulfill skills requirements by taking at least two course credits in quantitative reasoning, two course credits in writing, and courses to further their foreign language proficiency. Depending on their level of accomplishment in foreign languages at matriculation, students may fulfill this last requirement with one, two, or three courses or by certain combinations of course work and approved study abroad.

Advising

A student's primary academic advisor is his or her Residential College Dean.

Yale College Programs of Study

The Yale College Programs of Study contains a detailed description of the courses offered in Yale College as well as the Academic Regulations of Yale College. The YCPS also contains a chapter on the Transfer program which should be read by all interested candidates.