Why do people say that if you cannot get into a college as a freshman applicant, you won't get in as transfer?

I heard that phrase being thrown around a lot. Recently a friend of mines who graduated high school with a 3.4 GPA ended up at a state university and now she is at Columbia for her third year of college because she transferred. Maybe the case is because she attended a hyper competitive magnet school, same one I currently attend, which has been ranked top 5 in the state for the past 15 years.








Currently I am a high school senior myself with a 3.5 GPA, I have hit a sharp upward trend ever since my junior year and I know that I belong at an Ivy. The issue is that I had a rough life and learned English late in life, on top of that I don't really live in the best region of the US (life in the southeast is rough for minorities). I am 100 percent sure that if I lived in New York or New Jersey that I would be able to succeed at the schools there because the outside factors won't be in play (schools in bad condition, a bad education system and bad influence living in an area where nobody cares about an education and on top of that having to put up with being bullied because I am of a different race).





I mean it truly disgusts me when people say that if you could not get into a top college as a freshman applicant (straight out of high school), you won't get in as a transfer.








Is there any logic behind this saying?|||Same reason people say that if you did not play football in high school you can't play in college (when tons of division 3 schools are full of people who have never played football in their life before), same reason people say that if you can't get good grades in high school then you won't get good grades in college (which is obviously false) and same reason people say that if you cannot get a high SAT score then you won't get a high score on the MCAT.





Issue is, people in general are superficial. All people see are numbers, they don't see the reason behind those numbers. Maybe a kid got a 4.0 GPA in high school because he went to a high school where teachers just gave out grades, maybe the kid had a high SAT score because his parents could afford tutors and prep courses etc.





I know a student here at Cornell who transferred from a tier 3 university, he had a 3.8 GPA and he attended a tier 3 school for his first two years just so his parents can save money. The whole notion that you have to get into a good college right out of high school is in itself idiotic. Don't listen to anyone who tells you that bull, it is possible to get into a top college as a transfer and not half as hard everyone makes it sound like. Your SATs will still matter but you need a high GPA in your school of choice in order to qualify (a 3.7 or above).








There is no logic behind that saying, it was probably said by someone who never got into in the first place.|||Well yes and no. If your high school habits stay the same in college, then you wont get in. However, if you try really hard your first year of college and do really well then you probably have a better chance than if you didn't do that in HS.