Established in 1885, the Georgia Institute of Technology is a public university with a total of over 16,000 enrolled undergraduate students as of the fall of 2020. Located in Atlanta, Georgia, the school’s urban campus spans 400 acres.
According to the US News and World Report’s annual list of best colleges in the United States, Georgia Tech ranks #38 among all colleges and tenth among public universities.
Georgia Tech is also known for having stellar engineering programs, currently tied for fourth place among all American colleges for undergraduate engineering.
Out of all undergraduate institutions whose highest engineering degree offered is a doctorate, George Tech’s industria l/ manufacturing program is the very best in the nation.
Notable Georgia Tech alumni include Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the US, and biochemist Kary Mullis, who earned a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his groundbreaking invention of the process known as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
In addition, George Tech’s alumni network of over 140,000 highly successful graduates includes an impressive 14 NASA astronauts, not to mention dozens of CEOs of major companies.
The college’s sports teams, referred to as the Yellow Jackets, compete in the NCAA’s Division 1 Atlantic Coast Conference. There is a fierce, long-standing rivalry between Georgia Tech’s Yellow Jackets and the University of Georgia’s Bulldogs, which makes sporting events at the school extremely lively.
In this article, we have compiled some of the most important things to know for students who are considering transferring to a different school to complete their undergraduate studies. Read on to learn more about Georgia Tech’s transfer student acceptance rate, application requirements, deadlines, and more.
Georgia Tech Transfer Acceptance Rate
The acceptance rate for transfer applicants at Georgia Tech is 42%. In the 2020 academic year, the school received 3,436 transfer applications, accepting over 1,400 students from this pool.
This rate is up by nearly 10% from the previous year, during which Georgia Tech received 3,308 transfer applications.
Just over a thousand of these students were admitted to the school, meaning that the transfer acceptance rate for the 2019 academic year was 32%.
From 2017 to 2020, Georgia Tech has seen a consistent increase in the number of transfer applications they receive.
One might reason that this trend suggests transfer admission to the school will become more competitive, and yet the available data does not support this conclusion.
Rather, the acceptance rate for Georgia Tech transfer students has fluctuated over this period of time, jumping from 35% to 39%, then falling slightly to 36%, further declining to 32%, and finally rising to 41% from 2017 to 2020.
Application Requirements & GPA
To be eligible to transfer to Georgia Tech, students must have no less than a 3.0 GPA. For certain programs, such as the College of Engineering and the College of Computing, a 3.3 minimum GPA is required.
In 2020, however, the median GPA of accepted transfer students at Georgia Tech was 3.8.
Thus, to be a competitive transfer applicant at this school, students should earn primarily As in all of their courses, with a small handful of Bs.
To begin filling out the Georgia Tech transfer application, students first have to create an account on the college’s admission portal webpage.
The application includes two short essay questions, the purpose of which is to evaluate the applicant’s writing ability, as well as who they are as an individual.
Next, transfer applicants must submit an official transcript from all previous colleges. International transfer students must also submit a foreign credit evaluation if they have completed university-level coursework outside of the United States.
All transfer applicants are required to submit proof of English language proficiency. This requirement can be satisfied through the student’s official transcript, however, as long as they have taken a minimum of six credit hours of English language composition courses.
Course requirements vary between majors, so students need to check the chart, available on the school’s website before beginning the application to ensure eligibility.
Georgia Tech does not require SAT or ACT score submission as part of the transfer application process.
Georgia Tech Transfer Deadline
The deadline for applying to Georgia Tech as a transfer student is March 1 every year for those who intend to enroll during the fall semester. For spring semester transfer applicants, the deadline is September 15 each year.
Georgia Tech also allows transfer students to begin at the school during the summer session. Summer transfer applicants must submit their applications to the college by no later than January 15 every year.
Regardless of which semester the student wishes to transfer, there is an additional two weeks after the application deadline to submit supporting documents, such as transcripts, to the school.
The document submission deadline is April 15 for fall semester applicants, October 1 for spring semester transfers, and February 1 for the summer term.
For comparison, the deadline for regular decision first-year applicants at the school is January 5 each year.
For early decision 1 applicants, who must be Georgia state residents, the deadline to apply is in mid October every year. Early decision 2 applicants, who must be from out of state, must submit their applications by no later than November 1.
What Is the Decision Date for Georgia Tech?
Fall semester transfer applicants will hear back regarding Georgia Tech’s admission decision some time in the middle of May.
Students who apply to transfer to the school for the spring semester can expect to receive notification of their decision by November.
For those who apply to transfer in the summer term, the decision date is at the beginning of March every year.
There are three different admission decisions transfer applicants may receive by the aforementioned decision dates.
Transfer candidates who are denied will not receive offers for admission to Georgia Tech. They are also not permitted to reapply for another academic year.
For students who are accepted to transfer, the next step will be to notify the school if they intended to enroll in classes or not, and if so, to submit their enrollment deposit of $250 by the deadline.
Last, transfer applicants may be placed on the waitlist. What this means is that Georgia Tech’s admission team has reviewed the student’s application and determined that they are a good fit for the school, but that there is not enough space available in that year’s transfer class to extend an offer for admission just yet.
Deciding Whether You Should Transfer to Georgia Tech
At the end of the day, there is no definitive guide to determining if transferring schools is the right decision for you.
How content you will be with your undergraduate experience at a given institution depends on various factors, such as your intended program of study, the school’s location, the campus’s general atmosphere, and more.
One piece of information that suggests that transferring to Georgia Tech may be a great decision to make is their first-year retention rate, a relatively reliable indicator of how content students are at the school.
With a freshman retention rate of 97%, it is safe to say that an overwhelming majority of their students are happy to have chosen Georgia Tech.
Another factor to take into consideration is the cost of tuition at the school. For students who live in the state of Georgia, tuition and fees come to $12,682. On the other hand, tuition and fees for out-of-state transfer students are more than twice as expensive, adding up $33,794.
RECAP: How to Apply As a Transfer Student to Georgia Tech
If you are interested in applying as a transfer student to the Georgia Institute of Technology, the first thing you should do is visit the transfer student application portal on the school’s website. After creating an account, you can begin to fill out the application.
Then, you will need to respond to the two personal essay questions in the application. The possible essay prompts are available on the college’s website, for those who want to get a sense of what they entail before getting started.
It is crucial to ensure that you submit the application itself before the deadline for whatever term you wish to transfer to the school.
Again, the application deadline is March 1 each year for fall semester applicants, September 15 for spring semester applicants, and January 15 for summer term applicants.
The next step is to collect and submit the required supporting documents. These are official transcripts from all previously attended colleges and proof of English proficiency, which may be satisfied through the completion of six credit hours of English language composition coursework.
After submitting all additional documents by the relevant deadline, the transfer application process will be complete.
All that will be left to do at this point is wait patiently until the decision date, which is in mid-May, the beginning of November, or the beginning of March for fall, spring, and summer applicants, respectively.
