Rocky transitions frustrate mid-year transfer students

Transferring to Tufts is not always the smooth transition that it is supposed to be.

Both mid-year transfer and fall transfer students have expressed concerns ranging from credit transfer to dormitory integration.

When students apply to transfer to Tufts, Transfer and First-Year Class Dean Jean Herbert said, "they can know generally" which of their credits will transfer. If the Admissions Office is unclear on transfer-of-credit procedures, it sometimes refers prospective students to Herbert.

Though sometimes transfer students are disappointed with the number of credits that transfer after they enroll in Tufts, Herbert said, "more often than not, they are pleasantly surprised."

During transfer student orientation there is a block of time devoted to the transfer of credit procedure. Students meet with representatives from the academic departments to discuss which credits can transfer into which majors. "The faculty is very good," about the process, Herbert said.

However, according to junior transfer student Lauren Miller, "only 50 to 60 percent of the professors show up," causing confusion for the transfer students. Miller and junior transfer student Lauren Fein help Herbert's office run mid-year transfer orientation.

The economics, political science, and history departments, among others, failed to send representatives to this year's session, forcing interested students to seek out faculty on their own time, Miller said.

"Although you do not know where any buildings are on campus, you have to run around in two weeks -- like you have nothing else to do -- and find the chairs of the department to transfer your credit," senior transfer student Lisa Senecal said. Senecal transferred from Wake Forest University during the middle of her sophomore year.

In addition to special transfer student sessions, fall transfer students participate in the regular freshman orientation, which makes peer advising difficult. Miller said that few are able to understand their predicament. "The peer leaders -- they're not transfers," Miller said.

Fall transfer students are typically housed together in two or three dorms, whereas mid-year transfers are given vacancies all around campus. Senecal was housed in Haskell Hall, which "was not conducive to meeting anyone," she said.

"It is more important to me to become integrated into Tufts -- I did not transfer to Tufts to be with transfers," Senecal said.

Fein said there are additional difficulties for mid-year transfer students. "This year at orientation we didn't really know what to tell them about housing. Imagine you're coming in as a second semester sophomore and you don't have a lottery number," she said.

When they apply, transfer students are asked to identify two possible majors and are assigned a faculty advisor. Herbert said that students are given an advisor in their first-choice major 90 percent of the time.

Senecal said she is satisfied with her faculty advisor, but that "Tufts made no effort at advising before orientation." Despite being a philosophy major at her previous school and at Tufts, she was required to take English II her senior year.

Despite complaints from students like Senecal and Fein, Herbert likes the quality of advising for transfer students. "I think that it's fine," she said. "What we're doing works."

Herbert's office experienced poor attendance when it tried to run social programs for transfer students during the semester. "When run by students, we get a better response," she said.

Several years ago, Herbert said, there was a transfer student group that put on social events throughout the year. "There was a very active group that made the effort to stay together," she said.

Last year, Miller and Fein attempted to start a similar group. Since the previous transfer student group technically still existed but lacked both a budget and members, Miller and Fein were told they needed to wait a year before the group could have funding.

This year neither decided to restart a group, instead offering to help Herbert's office run orientation for mid-year transfer students. "You sort of just assimilate into the community," Fein said. "There was a lack of interest in the end."

If such an effort were to be made again, Herbert said her office "would facilitate it in any way."

Fein and Miller both transferred after their freshman years; Fein from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Miller from American University.