Three years, two colleges: reflections of a transfer

Today is move-in day at Colgate University for the Class of 2025 and transfer students, exactly three years after I moved into Curtis Hall. A lot of my friends are student leaders, and my social media feeds are plastered with photos of videos of them in Colgate t-shirts, standing on the sign at the bottom of the hill, welcoming new students to campus by yelling, clanging pots and pans and waving a sheet spray-painted with “Honk if you love Colgate!” 

And I won’t lie -- I wish I was there.

I will preface this by saying that I am so proud to be a transfer at Northwestern University, I love being a transfer and I feel so lucky to be a student here. It feels like a particularly special experience, because not only am I getting an amazing education, but I took a roundabout way of getting here.

I started at Colgate University in upstate New York, a small liberal arts college surrounded by nature, steeped in tradition and known for its school spirit. With the exception that it didn’t have a daily newspaper or the Medill School of Journalism, it had everything I wanted: strong academics, a choir, a skating team and a tight-knit community. However, it wasn’t the right place for me to spend four years.

I wouldn’t go back in time and decide not to attend Colgate, nor would I change my decision to transfer to Northwestern. If I could go back to April 2019, when I got my Northwestern acceptance letter, I would make the same decision. But I very nearly made a different one. I was ecstatic when I saw “Congratulations!” on the top of my screen, that I had been accepted to my dream school and one of the best journalism programs in the world. However, despite submitting transfer applications to eight schools, seemingly set on leaving Colgate if I had the chance, my second thought after being accepted was wondering if I would even choose to transfer to my dream school.  

Although I made amazing friends pretty early on, and they are still my biggest supporters three years later, it took awhile for me to adjust to the culture of college and of Colgate. Despite the support systems I had in place, I wasn’t cut out to attend what the Princeton Review deems one of the top 10 party schools. By the end of my first semester, I had finally begun carving out a space for myself, but I wasn’t happy yet.

I started the second semester in a flurry of working on my transfer applications, but knowing that the odds I would be accepted to any of my transfer schools were low because the transfer acceptance rates were below 10% everywhere I applied. During my cycle, half of those schools took less than 5% of transfer applicants. So I knew that I would have to do everything I could to make myself at home in Hamilton, because I might be there until my graduation day. 

I’m glad I did, because I had so much fun that semester, and I felt like I had a place on the hill. It made leaving so much harder, and it makes the difficult days at Northwestern almost painful. But I am so grateful for the experiences I had there and the friends I made. 

Colgate will always be special. It’s where I had my only year of college untainted by covid-19. It’s where I discovered I wanted to be a religious studies major. It’s where we sat in the dining hall at 2:00 a.m. because we could, and we flew down the snow-covered 20-foot hill outside our dorm on the lids of plastic bins to celebrate the first real snow. It’s where I realized that I wanted to transfer, because I wanted to work for a daily paper, and where I met the people who have gotten me through my hardest days at Northwestern.

It’s where I started my college experience, and I’m heartbroken that I won’t get to end it there. 

We celebrated our convocation with Link group photos on Willow Path before getting drenched in the torrential rain while following the torch-wielding members of the Senior Honor Society up to the top of the hill for convocation, and I won’t get to march back down the hill with my friends and classmates the night before graduation, carrying a torch of my own. 

I got to participate in all of Northwestern’s traditions, but only with 10% of my graduating class. I’ll be wearing a purple gown, while the people I started college with will be wearing black. Yes, I’ll be graduating alongside other friends, and at the end of the day, I’m glad that I transferred to the school that was a better fit for me and aligned more with my passions and goals. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss knowing the names of everyone in my classes, chatting with friends at the lib cafe, going to D1 hockey games, lounging on the quad and making the memories that can only be made at a school where the lucky number is 13. I never thought I’d say it, but I even miss walking up the hill.

To the Colgate Class of 2025, I hope you love every second in Hamilton, and I hope you find your place faster than I did. You have amazing seniors and professors who will look out for you every step of the way. Don’t be afraid to carve your own path, and enjoy the big impact you can make at a small school. And for those of you who choose to transfer, or didn’t settle in as fast as you wanted to, I will always be cheering you on.

Wherever you go, go ‘Gate.