When they first arrive at Tufts, students must go through the daunting task of adjusting from the high school academic system to the collegiate one. Making a change of this magnitude only one time can be difficult enough. For transfer students, though, it must be done twice.
Director of Admissions Leon Braswell recognizes that transfer students come from many different sorts of institutions. "I would hope that transfer students would be sensitive [to differences]...as you're going to a different kind of institution, different policies, in some cases different caliber of students," Braswell said.
For some students, adjusting to academic life here at Tufts wasn't terribly difficult. Second semester junior Kenny Hickman, who transferred from American University in his sophomore year falls into this
category.
Hickman found the schools' academic climates to be very similar. "The schools are about the same" in terms of classes, he said.
"You have big classes and small classes," he added. "It depends on which ones you take." The same variance applied to professors: "Some professors actually try to make themselves available, and some don't," Hickman said. "I've had both at both places."
The two colleges' administrations' treatment of academics, however, varied greatly. Hickman described Tufts as "a lot more focused on the academic aspect of college as opposed to outreach in the community ... students here are actually interested in their classes."
Students went to American University for different reasons than students went to Tufts, Hickman found. "A lot of kids at A.U. were primarily there to do internships and get part-time jobs and work for the government," he said. "Here, I'm going to focus on my degree for four years and maybe get an internship, but not three, which is the norm at A.U."
For Hickman, this focus on academics also manifested itself in Tufts' class requirements. The six-credit language requirement at Tufts differed greatly compared to American, as well as the core classes needed.
"The distribution requirements are a lot more numerous here than they were there, but it's not really a big deal," said Hickman, whose workload at Tufts has been comparable to his workload at American. "I haven't had to do significantly more work here or there," he said.
That was not the case, though, for junior Matt Kruger, a transfer student from George Mason, who found classes at Tufts to be more demanding. Kruger was expecting the upgrade in difficulty at Tufts.
"[George Mason] is not a good academic school - it wasn't challenging at all," Kruger said. "I'd gone there pretty much to transfer. I'd gone there to get my grades up and go to a better school."
Some transfer students, however, come to Tufts when already acquainted with its academic climate. "I took some classes here when I was in high school," said senior Chris Babayan, a student who came from Georgetown. "I'd always liked Tufts."
Academic adjustment at Tufts, of course, varies greatly depending on a student's first institution. For junior Alex Lauritson-Lada, who transferred from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, the jump from a college to a university made a big difference.
"There's no grad school [at Trinity], so the professors are there to teach, not do research," he said. "They're really devoted to teaching ... the quality of the academics is much better than here."
"Trinity's classes were smaller, the professors were better, the workload is harder ... the whole environment is more rigorous," Lauritson-Lada added.
The change came as somewhat of a surprise for Lauritson-Lada. "I expected it to be about equal," he said.
Though he believes Trinity to be academically superior, Lauritson-Lada still prefers Tufts. "I'm actually having fun here, whereas I hated being at Trinity," he said.
Like all students, transfers have an advisor who can help mitigate their academic difficulties. Transfer students, however, have an advantage in getting an advisor who works within their field of interest: "They tell us in their application what they want to major in, so we assign them an academic advisor in that field," said Jean Herbert, Dean of Students.
Though this measure is meant to help adjustment, it doesn't always work. "My advisor's a dick," said senior Dan Levine, who transferred from Union College and is majoring in math.
For other students, the in-field advisor isn't as helpful for more mundane reasons: after arriving at Tufts, Babayan switched his major from Mandarin Chinese and International Business to English. "It wasn't exactly what I'd planned on, but it works," he said.
Overall, Herbert says that transfer students don't differ academically from other students at Tufts. "It's across the board the same," she said. "Some are superlative, some struggle, some do medium."
