As Brown’s transfer population grows, new communities emerge

Days before most students flocked to campus for the fall semester, Sami Nourji ’26 was already at Salomon Center surrounded by new faces.  

While “awkward at first,” it wasn’t long until Nourji started to think he had found “the right place.” It was the first night of the Transfer and Resumed Undergraduate Education Orientation.  

Nourji is just one of the students part of a growing transfer community at Brown. This year, the University welcomed 157 transfer students.

The decision to transfer is often challenging. But the students interviewed by The Herald were committed to finding a stronger sense of community and more opportunities at Brown. 

Nourji, who entered Brown as a junior, had waited an entire year to be sure of his decision to leave the University of British Columbia. He eventually committed to Brown in search of a more connected student body and “ambitious people.”

Alexis Dahlberg ’27, a transfer student from George Washington University, only applied to Brown. “I was pretty happy where I was. I just thought that maybe I wanted more community,” she said.

Tiffany Kuo ’26, a former post- writer, applied early decision to Brown, transferring from Vassar College her sophomore fall.

“I’ve always wanted to come to Brown,” she said. “While I really enjoyed the education I got, I was really looking for more opportunities.” 

Making friends, finding community

“It takes time to build connections,” Kuo said, describing the early days of her transfer experience as “a little sad.” 

But she knew the difficulties she was facing came with adjusting to a new environment. It was hard in the way “the first month of freshman year is always hard,” she added.

Many transfer students recalled finding their first friendships within the transfer community. A month into his first semester at Brown, Sohum Sanu ’25, who transferred from the University of California at Berkeley in the spring of 2023, recalled renting a car with another transfer student and driving to the beach at Newport for a night swim. 

“I found some of my closest friends, who I’m still roommates with now, through the transfer cohort,” he said.

From there, Sanu did not hesitate to branch out, auditioning for an a cappella group, joining a consulting club and showing up to Cooking Club meetings. Essentially, he joined “every email list possible on campus.” 

“As a transfer student, you really have to be willing to show up to anything and everything,” he added.

For Lindsay Dunlap ’27, who transferred from the University of St Andrews this semester, this meant rushing the Alpha Chi Omega sorority and joining Brown Formula Racing, where she has met people who are “so interesting and unique, in a really good way.” 

She added that the extracurricular scene is one thing that non-transfer students at Brown might take for granted: “The clubs here are, for the most part, really active and people are really involved.”

But at this point in her time at Brown, she still feels a disconnect. “It’s a lot harder to make friends, especially with non-transfers, because a lot of people already kind of have their friend groups,” Dunlap said.

Navigating housing and academics

According to Kuo, who was placed in the New Pembroke dorms as a sophomore, the housing allocations given to transfer students contribute to this divide.

Living on the northernmost edge of campus made it “very isolating and difficult for students to meet other sophomores who were not transfers,” Kuo said, noting that most other sophomores lived on South Campus.

Both Dahlberg and Dunlap, who were assigned to New Pembroke this year, echoed Kuo’s sentiments. In addition to making it difficult to meet other students in her grade, Dahlberg said that the lack of common rooms in the dorm itself meant that she still doesn’t know many people on her floor.

Dunlap described the experience as a “double-edged sword,” admitting that living on North Campus alongside mostly first-years is “kind of weird.” But she also noticed that her transfer student friends who live in Wayland House or Marcy House are “surrounded by all returning students, and they feel isolated in that way.”

Alongside exploring communities outside of the classroom, many transfer students described tackling the Open Curriculum with equal curiosity.

“Brown is the best school to transfer to because you have so much flexibility,” Nourji said. He appreciates Brown’s lack of general education requirements, giving him room to explore diverse course offerings.

But he also stressed that he needs to “be conscious” of the limited time he has at Brown and how that renders some opportunities out of reach. “Things like a Certificate in Entrepreneurship, which I would have liked to do … I don’t feel like I have enough time.” 

For Dahlberg, a double-concentration won’t be an option. While she knows transfer students who are pursuing that option, she thinks she will not have the capacity. Studying abroad is higher in her list of priorities. 

Looking back on his five semesters at Brown, Sanu said that although he sometimes wished he had double-concentrated, everything turned out alright. “If I joined Brown freshman year, I wouldn’t have known what to study anyway, so this would have ended up happening,” he said.

The transfer student culture of support

To new transfer students, Kuo advises they should “never be scared to reach out to upperclassmen transfers for advice.” Now, as a junior, she “tries her best” whenever she meets new transfer students to bring them into her circle.

As a member of the Welcome Committee under the TRUE program, Sanu works closely with TRUE peer advisors to ease the adjustment process for new transfer students. They’re people who are “always there for you, always willing to provide support to you,” he said. “I have advisor friends who still take their group out to lunch or dinner every week.”

When he finds transfer students questioning what they can accomplish at Brown, he pushes back. “There’s nothing that (says), ‘We’re transfers, so we’re not supposed to do that.’ Everything is open,” he added.

Three months after he first met the transfer student community in Salomon, Nourji is happy with his decision to transfer. “People that have been part of the transfer community for longer are very welcoming,” he said. “They understand what we are going through, and they want to help.”

“Sometimes, I wish I came to Brown as a freshman and did the whole thing,” he added. “But being a transfer is special.”