Though roughly 200 students transfer to Brown each year, a small number of Brunonians choose to leave the University - which the Princeton Review reports has the "happiest students" in the Ivy League - and pursue their undergraduate educations elsewhere.
About 10 students transfer from the University each year, most often to Harvard or Stanford universities, though Columbia and Yale universities are "distant" third and fourth draws, according to Robert Shaw, executive associate dean of the college.
"Students are often applying to colleges they didn't get into the first time," Shaw said, adding that beyond the four most common choices, students transfer to a wide range of institutions.
But a few more than 10 apply to transfer each year. Rejection from their choice schools is "rare," Shaw said, adding some potential transfers simply decide to remain at Brown.
The number of students transferring out is a small fraction of those entering Brown as sophomore or junior transfers from other institutions. So why do Brunonians choose to leave in the first place? In addition to transferring to what was their first-choice school when they originally applied to college, Shaw said students might want to attend a smaller institution or might not feel Brown is the right place for them, perhaps because of the University's "political orientation" or "academic character." But Shaw said family and personal issues are the most common reasons students decide to leave College Hill.
Many of the students who leave are also athletes, though whether they transfer because of the athletic program is unclear. The Department of Athletics does not monitor how many student-athletes leave Brown or why they do so, only that they are no longer playing for the University, wrote Joan Taylor, senior associate athletic director, in an e-mail to The Herald.
Of those students who do transfer from Brown, Shaw said one or two choose to come back. Most transfers deal with academic and social transitions when moving from one institution to another, and some believe that "the stress is not worth the benefits," he said.
Ryan Roark '05, who transferred from Brown to Harvard and back again, was one such student. Even though she "really liked Brown" when she first came and "knew it was a good fit," Roark said she transferred to Harvard for the first semester of her sophomore year largely because of the university's academic resources.
But in retrospect, Roark said her double transfer was "probably not the most well-reasoned thing." She knew there would be little difference in the quality of education offered by the two Ivy League institutions, she said, but the additional resources and library collection tipped the scales in Harvard's favor. Upon reaching Cambridge, however, she regretted her decision.
"As soon as I got there, I wanted to return," Roark said.
She said she had underestimated the value of the University's resources and the friendliness of the advisers and administrators she had met at Brown. Opportunities offered by Harvard on paper proved to be difficult to attain in practice, she said, especially as an undergraduate.
"I had to struggle in order to take a graduate-level French course," Roark said. Her advisers at Harvard could not understand why she wanted to take the class when they believed she should focus on her concentration, she said.
Roark, who earned an A.B. with a double concentration in mathematics and comparative literature and an Sc.B. in biology, said Harvard's one-concentration restriction was not appropriate for her. Roark is now a Marshall Scholar engaged in cancer research at Cambridge University, an opportunity she said "wouldn't have happened if I had stayed at Harvard."
The social scene, however, proved less of an adjustment for Roark than might be expected. Harvard's system of residential houses, in which students eat in their house's dining hall rather than in a campus-wide cafeteria, helped Roark get to know her housemates, and she said she liked most of the people she met while at Harvard.
Like Roark, Janaki Kibe spent her first year at Brown and transferred to Harvard as a sophomore. But unlike Roark, Kibe is staying there.
"I did not feel I was maximizing my academic career at Brown," Kibe wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. "I am interested in economics and really wanted to attend a school where I could pursue more economics-related activities both in the classroom and out of the classroom."
Additionally, funding readily available at Harvard provides for extracurricular opportunities like Kibe's upcoming summer internship in Chile with an economics magazine, she said.
Students like Kibe and Roark illustrate a growing trend toward transferring once, and sometimes two or more times, during the course of an undergraduate education, said Sheilah Coleman, interim assistant dean of the college.
"Historically, the idea has been that you go to (one) college for your four years," Coleman said. Now, "the abstract quality called 'fit'" is becoming increasingly important to students, she said.
Despite this trend, Shaw said the number of students transferring from Brown, already a small number, has remained steady over the last 15 years.
Roark is happy she graduated from Brown. Having "seen the other side," she now considers transferring to be "more trouble than it's worth."
"In a way, I'm glad," she said of her decision to transfer twice. "But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone."
