Transferring to a 4-Year School

Don’t stop here.

As you near the finish line for your degree at MCC you should think about completing the BA or BS. Maybe you’ve had that in mind all along, which is great; and if you haven’t given it much thought, it’s ok to start now. Transferring can be exciting, or nerve-wracking, a great opportunity, or a pain; it can be just another step on your path, or a great upheaval. It usually involves some serious decisions and a number of compromises, but all-in-all it’s not that hard.

Most MCC students transfer to Brockport; it’s close by, familiar, and fairly easy to get into. It has a psychology department, and it’s a SUNY school. SUNY has fairly well-defined transfer agreements, so if you finish your MCC degree in psychology you’ll be able to finish your bachelor’s degree (baccalaureate) in psychology in four full-time semesters. This transfer provision applies to any SUNY school, so if you’re thinking about going to Buffalo or Geneseo or Binghamton or Oswego, the same opportunity applies.

And if you’re not stuck here in Rochester, give some thought to going to Buffalo (UB), Geneseo, Binghamton, Albany, Stony Brook. These particular schools have well-respected psychology departments, so if you’re really into it, and have good grades, you’ll get a better psychology education at these schools than you might elsewhere.

Of course, you don’t have to transfer to a SUNY school. And if you are stuck locally, Rochester is quite a college town, despite not really feeling like one. We have U of R, RIT, St. John Fisher, Nazareth, Roberts Wesleyan. They differ in size, cost, reputation, student body, campus life, number of professors, opportunities for research, even parking for commuter students. It’s easy to read about them on the web, but you can also go there for a visit and check out the campus, see how it looks and feels. They all probably offer summer tours.

And if you can get away, physically and financially, the whole country is full of colleges and universities. You can use transfer as a way to explore some part of the country or be closer to some distant family if that’s important to you (but visit first, to make sure the place feels right). You might also want to look for a school that has a special characteristic that you appreciate; maybe you want to be closer to a big city, or nearer to some mountains, or at a school with a strong pre-med program, or some place with a particular sport opportunity; there are psychology majors everywhere.

There are also online college options, but I can’t recommend online degrees unless your circumstances make it absolutely necessary. The full college experience is more valuable than just the coursework.

If your long-term plans involve a graduate degree (a masters or doctorate), you should aim for the most respected school that you have a chance of getting into. And by “respected,” I mean national reputation and not just the admiration of a local chamber of commerce. A psychology degree is very popular, so almost every college or university that offers graduate degrees will have psychology in the mix, but basically, the easier it is to get, the less it’s worth. And what does this have to do with transferring from MCC? The better psychology programs at the baccalaureate level will give you a better chance of getting into a more valuable graduate program. (Some of you will have your eyes set on a masters of social work, MSW, and it would be wise to consider transferring to a school that has an MSW graduate degree; locally, Naz, Brockport, and less locally UB all do.)

Now, for the nuts and bolts of how to look into the choices that are realistic for your situation, try these:

MCC’s Transfer Planning website
MCC’s Transfer Services Calendar where you can see when colleges are coming to visit, and schedule one-on-one appointments with college representatives.
The government’s College Scorecard (when you “view details” you can see things like typical debt of graduates, typical earnings of graduates, makeup of the student body, and so forth).
Psychology’s cream of the crop: have a look at this list, or just google “best psychology undergraduate programs” (but watch out for advertisers pushing schools like Capella). Sure, the best are competitive, which means there’s a chance you won’t be accepted, but if your grades are really good, go for it.