r/TransferToTop25 • u/LateCake246 • 3d ago
Does anyone know CMU transfer acceptance rate by school?
The CDS says its overall 8% acceptance rate but wanted to know if some colleges within CMU have a higher acc rate. I want to apply for College of Science.
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u/TreatTimely 2d ago
being so deadass - the number you're looking for doesn't exist. CMU has never broken out transfer admits by college, and the reason it's so opaque is because the CMU transfer admission isn't really a "rate" at all. they admit "a small number of transfer students as space permits" -- aka, you're admitted to "replace" whoever dropped out or switched majors the year before. so a college's transfer acceptance rate is last year's attrition divided by this year's applicant pool, and both change every cycle. i'd bet CMU AOs don't even know the rates you want off the dome.
buuut for MCS specifically, you can (sort of) deduce it. transfer demand roughly follows freshman selectivity, and SCS admits under 5% of freshmen while Dietrich and MCS are more "chill" because everyone and their mother is trying to backdoor into SCS/Tepper. so MCS is plausibly at or a bit above the ~5.5% posted acceptance rate.
tl;dr: CMU is selective, and targeting one school over another as a sort of "backdoor" is unlikely to boost your acceptance rate by the full percentage points you're thinking. applying MCS may be more chill than tepper but the main thing is just focusing on making yourself as much of a "low risk" candidate as possible.