- Edmund Thomas,
ISU transfer student
NORMAL-- Searching online for the admissions application your toes start to tap and your palms get sweaty as you fill out your information and type your personal statement. You re-read every single word to make sure you didn’t miss a comma or spell something wrong. You click submit and cross your fingers. Everything is out of your control now.
We all go through the stressful application process for college, but imagine doing it again a few years later. You may have been accepted into your dream university and have the major you’ve always wanted, but that’s not how it always goes.
Students change their major, drop out, or even transfer to another university. At Illinois State University there were 1,838 undergraduate transfer students accepted this year. From those, 1,481 have transferred from community colleges and 357 from 4-year universities.
Somehow I never realized how common it was for students to transfer to find better options for their education. A raise of hands in my morning MQM class showed almost half the students in this course are transfer students here at ISU.
Edmund Thomas is among those 357 students who transferred from another university, Northern Illinois University.
I met Edmund in class one day when our professor told us to get into a group of four for an in-class assignment. Two out of the four of us were transfers, Edmund and Chi Fung Lau.
Edmund transferred this past August from NIU because of academic dismissal, and Chi Fung Lau transferred from a community college in Palatine. Both are Illinois State University undergraduates, but both with completely different stories.
“This is my second year here,” Lau said. “It’s been an easy transition so far.”
Then there’s Edmund who didn’t quite agree.
“This is my third month here and it’s been really difficult,” Edmund said. “This is the first time living on my own, going to work, going to school and meeting new people.”
Edmund lives by Eastland Mall in Bloomington which requires him to commute to campus for classes. The job he found here keeps him busy on the weekends not leaving him much time to go out and have fun. Plus, transferring to a new place and not living on campus or in the dorms can be quite a challenge to meet new people, but he loves it here so far.
“ISU is a much friendlier student body,” Edmund said. “Students are more optimistic here compared to NIU. There are just different types of people there that we’re very nice.”
I see how excited he is to be here at ISU by the way he talks about classes and the university.
“I’m happy I transferred here,” Edmund said. “This was my first choice school but I didn’t think my grades were good enough from my community college to get in.”
NIU seems to be just a bump in the road for Edmund even after his academic dismissal. Edmund says he feels he should have gone to ISU all along.
Many students that feel that way might not act on their feelings and just stick it out at their current university or community college, but there are options. Transferring isn’t uncommon at all and can really impact your life.
“I came to ISU for better opportunities,” Lau said.
Edmund couldn’t agree more because education is important.
“I chose to transfer because education is key to having a better life and I wanted to finish my degree,” Edmund said. “I already have my associates so I figured I might as well finish it instead of dropping out and working a job I don’t like.”