After reading your comment, I’ve updated towards staying at my current school for the following reasons:
While I can see myself having a career in academic research, I’m not super confident that’s the direction I want for my career just yet. I also don’t really see myself entering consulting or finance. Outside of those fields, I’m not sure how much early-career benefit there is to having a brand name degree. There probably is some benefit, but it may not be as pronounced as in consulting or finance.
I think that mental health considerations are very important and I’m glad you pointed that out. I didn’t put much weight to that initially and I can see how transferring could add a lot of stress and potentially hurt GPA.
I’m not sure how important peer effects are compared to other factors, but I get what you mean. In high school I had a good group of friends that challenged me academically. So far in college I haven’t had that kind of challenge from my friends, but I am just in my freshman year so that could change as I meet other people. Most of my academic motivation nowadays comes from myself and is less dependent on a healthy competition between me and my friends. I am in the school’s honors college as well, and while the honors students are more academically motivated, for me the challenge from my peers doesn’t feel the same as it did in high school.
I will probably get a master’s degree after finishing my undergrad, though I’m not yet sure what field it’ll be in. I think I can aim for a more well-known school once I get my master’s. In terms of location, I’m not set on any particular city yet, though if I had to guess where I’ll eventually end up it would be somewhere on the East Coast or West Coast. I think this is mainly because my career path is not super solid right now and I’m mostly exploring different career paths. In terms of mental health, I can definitely see how a transfer could impact GPA negatively. Transferring could hurt my grad school admission chances if it lowers my GPA.
Overall, while it looks like there are early-career benefits to attending a top university, at least for me it may not be worth the costs in terms of increased financial cost, added stress, losing friends, and time and energy taken by transferring schools.
Thank you for the thoughtful response!
After reading your comment, I’ve updated towards staying at my current school for the following reasons:
While I can see myself having a career in academic research, I’m not super confident that’s the direction I want for my career just yet. I also don’t really see myself entering consulting or finance. Outside of those fields, I’m not sure how much early-career benefit there is to having a brand name degree. There probably is some benefit, but it may not be as pronounced as in consulting or finance.
I think that mental health considerations are very important and I’m glad you pointed that out. I didn’t put much weight to that initially and I can see how transferring could add a lot of stress and potentially hurt GPA.
I’m not sure how important peer effects are compared to other factors, but I get what you mean. In high school I had a good group of friends that challenged me academically. So far in college I haven’t had that kind of challenge from my friends, but I am just in my freshman year so that could change as I meet other people. Most of my academic motivation nowadays comes from myself and is less dependent on a healthy competition between me and my friends. I am in the school’s honors college as well, and while the honors students are more academically motivated, for me the challenge from my peers doesn’t feel the same as it did in high school.
I will probably get a master’s degree after finishing my undergrad, though I’m not yet sure what field it’ll be in. I think I can aim for a more well-known school once I get my master’s. In terms of location, I’m not set on any particular city yet, though if I had to guess where I’ll eventually end up it would be somewhere on the East Coast or West Coast. I think this is mainly because my career path is not super solid right now and I’m mostly exploring different career paths. In terms of mental health, I can definitely see how a transfer could impact GPA negatively. Transferring could hurt my grad school admission chances if it lowers my GPA.
Overall, while it looks like there are early-career benefits to attending a top university, at least for me it may not be worth the costs in terms of increased financial cost, added stress, losing friends, and time and energy taken by transferring schools.
That seems like a sound line of reasoning to me — best of luck with the rest of your degree!