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The University of Connecticut undergraduate student body is made up of people from many diverse educational backgrounds. Some students come to Storrs for all four years of school, others start at a regional campus before making the transition and others come from completely different universities before transferring. While there are a lot of transfer students on campus, the idea of transferring still seems extremely daunting to many. However, due to UConn’s Guaranteed Admissions Program, the process of transferring to Storrs has been made easier for many students over the past few years.
The Guaranteed Admissions Program (GAP) is a program that “guarantees transfer students admission to UConn if they earn a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA and an associate degree in an approved academic program.” Additionally, it ensures that students can enter UConn with a junior status. This is extremely beneficial to students who may want to continue their education, but are unhappy at their current university. It is also useful for students who may have begun their education in an associate program, but have decided to extend that. The options for this kind of student are often very overwhelming, but by providing this program, UConn is helping to ease this transition and give students some security in their future.
One of the other concerns that many transfer students have is whether their credits will be counted by UConn. It is well known by all undergraduate students who come into their UConn education with some amount of college credits that this process can be tricky. To combat this often confusing and difficult situation, the GAP program has created a website where prospective transfer students can check which of their transfer credits will be counted by the university. Between the fall 2011 and fall 2015 cohorts of the GAP program, students came in with an average of 61.3 accepted credits. This shows immense success in the program’s ability to start students at a junior status and speaks to the dedication of our university to make this transition easy for students.
Transferring schools is never easy and can be a very nerve-wracking experience. However, through the GAP program, UConn is showing its commitment to making transfer students’ transitions a bit less stressful. The success of this program is clearly shown through its statistics over the past five years, and we should applaud this effort by the university. In the future, we should remember that while transfer students now have a secure way of beginning their education at UConn, they are often still in need of support once they arrive. If we can also improve the support and success of transfer students once they start at UConn, we will continue to make this school a better environment for all students.
