#140 Avoiding the Pitfalls of College Transfers with Jaime Smith Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker Robbins 00:45

In today’s episode, we’re exploring college transfers, focusing on how to prevent unplanned transfers in your teen’s future and when a planned transfer path might make sense. I’m excited to be joined by Jamie Smith, an independent educational consultant who specializes in working with transfer students. In our conversation, Jamie sheds light on the common reasons why over 1/3 of college undergraduates end up transferring at some point. We’ll discuss how social factors, college, major choices, financial issues and personal situations can lead to unplanned transfers, and we’ll give tips on how to prevent your teen from having to pivot to a new campus after they are already in college. Jamie will also explain when a planned transfer path, such as starting in a community college, can be a smart financial and academic strategy, while identifying when it won’t work, whether your student is still in high school and you’re looking to avoid potential pitfalls, or you have a college student considering transferring. This episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish, coaching, production. Let’s dive right in to a great conversation.

Lisa Marker Robbins 02:07

Well, Jamie Smith, welcome,

Jaime Smith 02:11

thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Lisa Marker Robbins 02:13

I am too. We’ve had so much interaction on social media over the years, and this is our first time in person. What a treat.

Jaime Smith 02:24

Yes, this is great. I’ve been following you and listening to your podcast. It’s really exciting to know be a guest. Well,

Lisa Marker Robbins 02:29

thank you for being a faithful listener. I you. You specialize in something that people, most people, probably, are hoping they never need you

Jaime Smith 02:40

exactly yes.

Lisa Marker Robbins 02:43

That might not feel very good, right, but

Jaime Smith 02:47

no, but it’s great, because I’m there when you do need me. So very

Lisa Marker Robbins 02:50

good. So transfer students are your specialty, although you work for with other students as well. Yes,

Jaime Smith 02:56

I do. I do have, you know, a couple of specialties, but basically, I love the non traditional students. So in addition to transfer students, I like to work with homeschoolers, or, you know, students beyond the usual college age, or students who want to explore, like online college. I just love the students who are following a different path. So I just that that’s fun for me. So I like to do all the research and learn new things and help those students find their way the road

Lisa Marker Robbins 03:21

less traveled in some yes, that can be the best road, right? Yes. So when we were getting ready to, you know, I approached you and said, Hey, let’s talk transfers. And I want our listeners right now, like, stay stay on, because this is not about, like, do you a conversation where it’s like, oh, you have a college student who wants to transfer? No, we’re going to talk about how to prevent needing the transfer and how there’s actually a path that is an intentional transfer path. So we want to we’re going to talk about both of those, how to prevent the unplanned transfer and how to know if you’re a family who might want to have a planned transfer path. So I want to say that right at the top, because I don’t because I don’t want people to go like that, Oh, this isn’t for me. If you have a high school student, this is for you, right? Exactly,

Jaime Smith 04:09

yes. So often, the first meeting I have with the potential transfer student is trying to talk them out of transfer trying to see if there’s a way to help them make their current situation work better. So if I can get that information to families before they even start, it’s all the better.

Lisa Marker Robbins 04:25

I love that you just said that like it’s in this reminds me of we had a previous episode on like, what if you what if you’re need to change majors while you’re already in college? You know, When can it work? When can’t it and then how to prevent needing to change majors. And I had somebody from the University of Cincinnati, and to talk about that, I’ll link to that episode. But she said a lot of times somebody shows up in her office and she’s like, you’re feeling like you need to change your major. Like, let’s really be sure you need to. And she goes a lot of times they don’t need to. So. I love that you just said that. Let’s like, Okay, you feel feelings are not facts, my friends, you feel like you need to transfer, but let’s explore the different paths. Maybe you are in the right place. So there’s a lot of stigma around transferring, I know, and that’s why it’s never anyone’s desire. Like, why do you think there is all this stigma and kind of, what is it?

Jaime Smith 05:24

Yeah, I think that there’s this feeling that if you have to transfer, that you’ve done something wrong. You know, you’re a failure, you’ve made some horrible mistake. And so very often, people just don’t talk about being transfer students. So once they get to their new university and they settle in. They never tell anybody that they started somewhere else. You know, they’re they’re thinking, well, the the name on my degree is all that matters, and I’m just going to forget about that first thing and pretend I didn’t do it. And so if people aren’t talking about it, then it’s like this, this hush hush thing that nobody really does. But in reality, more than a third of undergraduates transfer at some point. That’s a pretty huge percentage of undergraduates who are transferring so and about half of those are unplanned, and the other half are, you know, this planned community college transfer route. So, I mean, this is a really large number of students that does this path every year, and just nobody talks about it because there’s some sort of shame involved. So for transfer in general, I think there’s that feeling of failure. And then for transfer from like a community college, there’s that community college stigma that, you know, this is some lesser school. So I think both of those factors work in which

Lisa Marker Robbins 06:35

is totally not true about community colleges. And you know, as in my specialty around college major and career coaching. I’m quick to point out that, okay, a lot of people are very focused on income, you know, when they’re choosing their careers and not that that’s not good or bad. Like, if that aligns with your values and that’s important to you, then you absolutely should be looking into that data. There are many community college terminal degrees where people in those careers are making more money than a lot of bachelor degree career? Absolutely.

Jaime Smith 07:06

Yeah, community colleges do some amazing things in in our communities, to be training students for all kinds of of jobs, or providing opportunities for them to transfer and get bachelor degrees. So they just play so many roles. They’re they’re definitely worth looking into, and should not be stigmatized anymore. I think we can get beyond that in 2024

Lisa Marker Robbins 07:27

one would hope. And so just know that Jamie and Lisa are putting a call out there for if you’ve ever transferred adults freely, please talk about it like, let’s normalize this, right? Absolutely, because that will remove the shame and stigma. Now, with that said, you know, I mean, people don’t like change in general, right? And a transfer is a change, so even beyond the stigma, just navigating change, it can often transferring can often lead to a longer time in school, absolutely leads to more money spent. So I’m curious, like, when that student or that family ends up in a meeting with you and they’re like, we think we might need to transfer, or they might come in like, we need to transfer, and you’re going to have that conversation about, like, do we really what are the primary reasons that they end up talking to you like, what are they feeling or experiencing, or even the facts that might lead them to think that transfer is a good idea?

Jaime Smith 08:31

Yeah, a lot of the time I hear about social factors, not getting along with a roommate, feeling like you haven’t found your friends. This is really common in like December of freshman year, really, maybe it’s homesickness, really. Maybe it’s, you know, having difficulty adapting. But I have to tell them that, you know, if you’re having trouble finding friends as a first year student, where there are all these Welcome Week activities and ways to get to know other students, you know that’s not going to be improved by transferring to a new school. You know, when you enter as a transfer, then there aren’t as many getting to know you sorts of activities, it’s harder to make friends. So if you’re thinking you want to transfer, to find your your people and find your new friends, you may actually be doing your self a disservice. So if they come in and they’re really their only reasons are social reasons. I asked them to, you know, try getting into some clubs. You know, maybe you need to ask for a room change. Maybe your roommate really isn’t a good fit for you, and so you should talk to housing. You know, that’s certainly, it’s a lot easier to change your room than it is to change your school. So for sure, I asked them to start there and then see if, you know, maybe we can adjust things to make it work better, because transfer is probably not going to fix any social issues,

Lisa Marker Robbins 09:45

you know, things that, oh, yeah, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, well, first of all, I changed roommates my freshman year, and it worked out great, and I never had to change roommates again. So, yeah, that is very possible. I never even had thought. About that. But like, right there, one of the things that comes to mind, you know, if we think about, like, if a parent of a teen is trying to prevent having, having a kid who wants to transfer later, kind of, I don’t know, talking about expectations around all of things social, right? So realize they don’t expect you really easy. Exactly.

Jaime Smith 10:22

It is hard to live with a total stranger. You know, it is hard to coordinate with a roommate who has different waking hours and eats different foods and, you know, wants to call people in the middle of the night, and how do you negotiate those conversations? That that’s a life skill. So sometimes these, these people who come and think, I have to transfer. It’s like, well, maybe let’s talk about some of these, these living skills. And those are things that you can be teaching in junior and senior year of high school, talking about how to collaborate with people and cooperate and find a way to work with difficult people. Because your college roommate is probably not the only difficult person you will ever encounter, that’s

Lisa Marker Robbins 11:00

for sure. So, okay, so that would be a reason they come to you, but you’re, you’re gonna, that’s the one where you’re gonna say, like, we might be, we probably are gonna be better off to stick it out. What are the other reasons why they end up working with you? Yeah,

Jaime Smith 11:15

it can be all kinds of things that they may dislike about the school. You know, during covid, I had a lot of kids who didn’t get a chance to visit the school in person, and they were choosing blindly, and then when they got there, they realized it was not what they wanted, which really, to me, highlights the need to go on those campus tours and visit and, you know, make sure you really know what you’re getting into before you commit. So that’s definitely something to be on the lookout for. If you’re thinking, oh, we’ll save money and just not tour, I think that’s a big mistake that’s going to cost you in the long run. Other things tend to be academic, feeling like you chose the wrong major, or that the major that you’re in is maybe too hard, or the professors are unfriendly, or things like that. And those are a little more nuanced. You know, sometimes those feelings are right. Sometimes it’s a lack of confidence. Sometimes it’s a student who chose a major just because they wanted to have the the great paying job. You know?

Lisa Marker Robbins 12:12

Yeah, you know that obviously, as a college major and career coaching person, my passion, I want them to get do the things to get clear. You got to create the space to get clear before you’re choosing it, because that is a big deal, but it makes me think of a former student of mine and even my daughter, who just graduated from college. And, you know, business majors don’t often realize they have like they’re going into marketing, and they’re people and words and influence and inspiration, they still have to take econ and business calculus and accounting, and a lot of kids don’t realize that. And you know, my sister, or my sister, my daughter, was like, I just want to get to the classes in my major. And it makes me think of a previous student I had worked with when she was in high school. She knew she was on the right path. She got to econ, she was absolutely dying in econ, and she was going to trash her major, possibly switch schools. And I’m like, what if we just got a tutor, or you went to your professor during office hours to get some help, just to get through this one class. And she ended up doing that. She got a tutor, and stuck it out, and it was all fine, but, but it is nuanced. If they were throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what might stick or basing it on their favorite class in high school, not the best methodology to be on the right path. So, so that could be like if they did finally put in the time and they knew that they needed to change majors, then that they might not have their major at their college exactly,

Jaime Smith 13:53

or maybe they, you know, it could just be that you’re not ejecting from your first major, but that you’ve discovered some new passion, you know, you took a class that was just kind of a, you know, a general education requirement, but you fell in love with it, and then found out they don’t have that major at your school, so you have to change schools if you want to specialize in that. Other times, they see students who’ve gone to a really specialty sort of school, like an art school or something, and then they realize maybe they don’t want to turn their beloved hobby into their job, and if that art school doesn’t offer other majors, which many of them don’t, their only option is to transfer to try something else,

Lisa Marker Robbins 14:32

right? Any other reasons why they I mean, those seem like those would be the ones that come to mind for me. Yes,

Jaime Smith 14:38

and I think as far as preventing them, I mean, one of the things that I do with freshmen is I always look at the major they think they want to do, and look at the required classes and say, Do these look fun and interesting to you? Are you excited to take these classes? And like you said, a lot of those potential marketing majors look at the calculus requirements and are like, Oh no, that does not look fun at all.

Lisa Marker Robbins 14:59

Right. Well, that

Jaime Smith 15:00

actually different directions, you know, right?

Lisa Marker Robbins 15:02

That was actually one of the points that the the woman, Casey, who I had from the University of Cincinnati, said she’s like, kids don’t think about, what am I going to have to do to earn that degree? And she says, if they, if they don’t have calculus ability, like, they’re not going to be able to go get the business degree, right? I even when they’re in high school, it’s like kids might think they want to major in engineering, and then they start to struggle in Cal calculus, regular calculus in high school, they’re not going to make it through. So it’s really, I mean, it’s getting honest with yourself about your aptitude and strength. Everybody has superpowers, and not everything can be your superpower, but let’s be honest about what they are.

Jaime Smith 15:44

Yes, absolutely, I think that’s really important for the kids to be thinking. When I talk to kids about this, I’m like, we’re not just looking for a school you can get into. We’re looking for a school you can get out of, because that’s the ultimate goal, right?

Lisa Marker Robbins 15:59

Yeah. I mean, it’s the worst thing in my mind, is to start and not graduate, particularly if you took on any student loans or any debt. Exactly. That is far worse than never going at all. In my opinion. I

Jaime Smith 16:13

totally agree. Yeah. So, okay, so that’s

Lisa Marker Robbins 16:17

like the unplanned when somebody lands in your office and they’re like, oh my gosh, we didn’t plan on this. Sometimes transfer, yeah.

Jaime Smith 16:25

And sometimes there are other reasons, personal reasons, illnesses, family members get sick, financial reasons. Sometimes, you know the often I hear parents say, Well, if you get into such and such a school, we’ll just make it work. And then they’re there paying insane amounts of tuition for a year, and they’re like, We can’t keep doing this. This is unsustainable. I don’t love the financial reasons, because you do lose credits and sometimes extend your time to degree, so you have to work the numbers to see if transferring is really going to help the financial situation. But personal situations, you know, sometimes you need to take a gap year. Maybe you do need to go to a different school that’s closer to home, or one that would be more flexible with a medical issue. You know, life happens, and sometimes you need to make adjustments, but there are tons of adjustments you can make. Transfer isn’t always the first line of defense, and some of those things, you know, personal things you can’t always see in advance. You don’t always know how to prevent something. If it’s going to be an illness that pops up financial that one look into set a budget and stick with it, right?

Lisa Marker Robbins 17:30

Preach it. I mean, I always say the very first thing sophomore year, my goal is sophomore year of high school that families are setting the budget and communicating that in not even allowing their teen to visit a campus that they might not be able to afford. I was working with a family. The daughter is high school class of 2020, so she would be graduating. But the second daughter, they have four kids, so they were one of those families who will make it work, went to Boston College, and then it just really was not sustainable, given the fact that they have three more kids, and then that budget was affecting what the options were going to be for the next three kids. So and I think too, as you were talking about the money, I was thinking about how there are many more scholarships, merit scholarships, for first time freshmen, than for transfer students, right? That’s always been my inclination. Is that correct? Yeah,

Jaime Smith 18:32

there usually are. There are more transfer scholarships than there used to be. So that’s great, but yeah, your chance for merit scholarships. That’s usually going to be your first year opportunity. And none of those things are going to transfer with you. When you transfer to a new school, you’re sort of starting fresh with all kinds of financial aid, merit scholarships, all those things you have to it doesn’t transfer automatically. You have to go, you know, meet the financial aid officers at the New School and figure out what they’re going to do for you, because it may not be the same terms that you had at the previous school. So you got to take that into consideration. Even

Lisa Marker Robbins 19:09

on that changing major, sometimes universities are giving merit money. There’s the general fund of scholarships, and then there’s department scholarships, and you change your major, you’re going to lose part of that. Okay, so we’ve talked about this unplanned, but sometimes a listener might have a sophomore or junior right now or senior, and they’re listening to this, and they’re like, What do you mean? Plan? Like, why would we ever plan to transfer? But there’s some cases where it really makes sense. So let’s talk about that. Yeah,

Jaime Smith 19:43

exactly. There are some cases where it would make sense for a student to start at a community college and be on a transfer pathway with a plan to then go from that community college to a four year university. And that can be a great money saver. You know? Especially if you have a student who’s not really sure what they want to study, it is much cheaper to explore different options and different kinds of majors at a community college than it is to go all in at a four year university on a major you’re not sure about and then have to pivot later. So for those students who are really undecided, I always say, let’s talk about community college, let’s see if that sort of cheaper exploration is going to work out

Lisa Marker Robbins 20:24

for you. Yeah, that or even a gap year, or even

Jaime Smith 20:28

a gap year? Yeah, totally. Not every student is ready at 18 to commit to a four year school and a particular major and a life path. You know, some of them need a little bit more time to grow. The other thing can be, some of us have, like, late bloomers, you know, maybe the student didn’t really catch on to the idea of getting good grades in high school as a technique for getting into college. So, you know, some of those students like they reach senior year and they see their friends going off to college, and they realize that they kind of blew it. They didn’t get the grades they needed to go to the kinds of schools they want. You know what community college is? A fresh start most of the time. Community colleges have these, these two plus two plans where you do your two years at a community college, you transfer to a four year for the next two years. And when you’re doing that transfer application, they only want to see your community college transcript, so you can just start over with a whole new GPA. If you’re trying to transfer earlier. You know that doesn’t always work out. But for kids who are being intentional about their choices and decide, okay, I need a do over. I need to get this right a second time, a community college can be a fresh start well. And I

Lisa Marker Robbins 21:35

was, as you were saying, that about like, grades and sometimes kids are looked at and they’re like, Okay, well, you have to take some remedial courses that at college that are not even going towards your degree. It’s going to extend your time in here. So the community college route could be a way more affordable way to do those remedial courses, so that you can show that, okay, you are up to snuff. You’re taking it seriously now, you’re performing. And because those, those are hours in some semester, this is going to count towards graduation. So definitely, as you’re talking about these, like, there are degrees that are, like planned, two plus two. So it’s, it’s literally designed so that you can do two years at the community college and two more years at the main region or the main campus, right? Those are my design I had a student years ago. And again, this is just me in my with my college major and career coaching hat on. So I don’t know how often you encounter this, but her family was on a budget, and their intended path was, she was going to be an art major. Their intended path was, we’re going to do two years Community College, two years main campus, and graduate. And it was for financial reasons, and it was, it was really, I got it like that. That was the right path, right? And I said to her, I’m like, This is not my expertise, but be sure on the main campus that you really are only going to have two years left to do. So she talked to main campus, and they’re like, No, you’ll still have, like, three and a half to four years that you’re going to have to have to do when you get here. Can you talk a little bit? Because to me, that feels like there was a giant pitfall that could have been there, that they could have tripped into this hole, and now they’re paying for six years of college instead of doing an affordable two years and another two years, because they just said, like, that was not that’s not a design path. So how do we make sure we avoid that type of a problem? Yeah,

Jaime Smith 23:45

it’s a lot of research. A lot of these strongest agreements are within a single state. So you’ll have a community college that has a particular agreement with the usually, like the public, you know, main public flagship of that state, and they’ll have some sorts of guarantees, like you can get all of your general education requirements done at the community college. We guarantee that they will transfer in, and you don’t have to take any more here. Then it goes to the major level. And the the really organized states, I’m sorry, but not every state is as transfer friendly and organized as some. But the really, yeah, the really organized states have detailed major maps and specific Transfer Pathways for individual majors, and you have to do the research to go see if the particular combination of community college and four year university and major that you are considering is actually going to be a well defined, clearly thought out pathway. Sometimes you look at those and you see, well, okay, the four year university is going to accept me and accept my general education requirements, but they’re going to say, No, I didn’t need any prerequisites for the major. So maybe you need to look at a different community college. Maybe you need to look at online classes, or maybe that university. Is just really picky, and they think no one else could possibly teach art the way they do. So if that’s really your desired University, it might make more sense to go directly there. And something that a lot of families don’t realize is that they are absolutely empowered to reach out to admissions offices and reach out to transfer specialists and say, This is what we’re thinking of doing. How will it work? You know, and the kind of response you get also tells you something about their their beliefs and transfer and how supportive they are of transfer students. If they’re willing to talk this through with you and help you figure out whether or not this is a good plan, you know, if they’re willing to help you, then that’s probably a pretty transfer friendly institution, and they’re worth working with. If they dismiss you and and say, Well, you just have to figure it out when you get here. Maybe that’s not really the school you you want to go to. They may not be as supportive of their transfer students

Lisa Marker Robbins 25:51

when. So that just made me think we were like they’re, you know, transfer Friendly Schools. Do you feel like there’s more transfer friendly universities then not friendly. Or, like, say,

Jaime Smith 26:06

you know, it’s a spectrum. It’s

Lisa Marker Robbins 26:07

a continuum,

Jaime Smith 26:08

yeah. So, like, there are some places like, I’m originally from California, so I’ll talk about the the University of California system. They are super transfer friendly. They, you know, the community colleges and UCs there have completely defined all the requirements, if you check all the right boxes, then you can go from community college to UC and just have everything lined up. And then there are support systems when you get there, there are transfer clubs and a, you know, a transfer community that you can enter into. So that’s an example of a really transfer friendly system. Some of the other universities, especially privates, more selective privates, they may not be as transfer friendly. They may not be, you know, I have yet to encounter a university in the US that doesn’t accept transfer students. Just flat out, says, No, thank you. But there have definitely been some that only accept a handful of transfers each year, and then they don’t have a lot of, you know, people on staff or programs to support those transfers. They’re kind of just thrown in on their own. Well, that

Lisa Marker Robbins 27:11

goes back to your original story about, like, the social side of it. It’s going to be more challenging, exactly, I encountered one time with a student, and I don’t, I don’t work with many transfers, but occasionally I am. And there was a student who had a school in mind, but that school would he wanted to do a mid year transfer in January. And what I learned this was years ago that I didn’t know. A lot of colleges don’t have any they might even if they have a mid year start. For freshmen who’ve never gone to school before, they don’t do transfers mid year, most of them, but yet, it’s a Fall Start. Is that correct? Yeah,

Jaime Smith 27:52

even for schools that accept mid year transfer applications, I advise students not to do it. I’ll say, take a gap semester or stick it out at your current school, like I advise them not to take those January entries, because even the schools that are accepting students for January, they’re they’re accepting you in but there’s none of that Welcome Week stuff. There’s no orientation. You know, if you are thinking about a spring entry, a January entry, you really need to do your research and find out how they’re going to support you. You know, how are they going to help you get the right classes, find a place to live. You know, transfer housing is not always guaranteed, so for mid year entry, housing can be a huge issue, so I usually advise against it, just generally. But if you are really committed, reach out to the school and ask them, What do you do with your January transfers? How does that work? And also, what are the odds of admission? Sometimes the odds of admission can be higher or lower, so

Lisa Marker Robbins 28:48

mid year versus for the yeah,

28:51

great advice. Well, and I think everything, yeah, go ahead,

Jaime Smith 28:55

yeah. I want to say one more thing, one more reason you might consider community college transfer route is that sometimes there is an easier pathway to a big name University, especially if you’re looking at publics like University of California, University of Virginia, some of them have these clearly defined transfer programs, and there may even be guarantees, where you know if you do the right things, then you have a guaranteed spot at the next University. And those can be really valuable programs. So even students who might not have been eligible to get into that university for first year admissions, they may be able to become eligible through community college, work and transfer, and may even earn a guaranteed spot at their desired University. So sometimes it’s worth looking into the odds of Transfer Admission versus first year admission, and I will just say on my website, plug for my website, transfer savvy.com I’ve been collecting some of that data. So I have two big databases on my site. One is for admission rates and. Comparing the first year admission rates to the transfer admission rates and the hard numbers, how many transfer students are there being accepted to each campus? And the other thing I have is graduation rates. So a lot of people don’t realize that the widely publicized graduation rates are only for first year full time entering students. They don’t include transfers, and you might be surprised at how different the rates are for incoming transfer students to graduate from particular universities compared to the graduation rate they have for first year students. So you really do want to do your homework, and so I’m trying to make some of that more visible and make it easier to find that information. Well,

Lisa Marker Robbins 30:39

I think too, if people would look at with a high school student, would look at the that information, the data that you have now, it really maybe creates, what I preach all the time is, create the space, create the time. Do this with intention. We know everybody is super busy, but you’re getting ready to spend possibly six figures or more, in all likelihood, I just did. I just finished paying for our youngest and so I got a pay raise. But it when you’re spending that much on it, like it’s worth doing the time, and you’re just another person that’s creating the case for why we need to really be intentional with our high school students as early as sophomore year. So absolutely, yeah, Jamie, you’re a great resource. I know there are, like hardly any people that specialize this, in this area, so much so that you’re writing a book, right?

Jaime Smith 31:36

I am. Yeah, I was looking around and felt like there was just not enough information if you’re looking for first year information, you’re overwhelmed by book options and YouTube channels and whatnot. And if you’re looking to transfer, there’s not a lot of information. And worse, if you are doing that unplanned four year to four year transfer, you certainly cannot go to the advisors at your current university and ask for help for transfer admissions. They do not want to help you leave their college. So, yeah, there’s a real need for outside resources, and I have yet to clone myself. So I decided I would write a book, and it is scheduled to come out in 2025

Lisa Marker Robbins 32:12

Well, will you come back and talk to us about it?

Jaime Smith 32:15

I would love that. Thank you. Good. Okay,

Lisa Marker Robbins 32:18

what’s your website again? And how do people get in touch? Yeah,

Jaime Smith 32:22

my website is transfer savvy.com. Savvy, S, A, V, V, y, because I want everybody to be savvy about their transfer options. And there’s a Contact Us form on there, and you’re always welcome to email me as well. I’m Jamie at transfer savvy.com Jamie j, A, I am E, that’s why I have a contact form, because my name is hard to spell.

Lisa Marker Robbins 32:50

I love it. Well, thank you this. You’ve been a wealth of information, and I know our listeners really appreciate it. Thank you, Jamie. You’re welcome. Thanks

Jaime Smith 32:58

for having me. You

33:04

music. Thank

Lisa Marker Robbins 33:04

you to Jamie Smith for sharing her expertise on college transfers and offering insights into how to navigate this often overlooked aspect. I hope our discussion has provided you with a clearer understanding of when transfers make sense and how to avoid unplanned ones. As we wrap up, I encourage you to visit Jamie site at transfer savvy.com to access valuable data on transfer rates and explore the planned transfer might align with your family’s financial and academic goals. We have that link in the show notes too. Having an informed discussion as a family can help you make the best decision for your teen’s college bound journey. If today’s episode was helpful, please share it with a friend who might benefit from it, and don’t forget to rate and review as well as follow the podcast to help us reach more families with valuable insights and support. Thank you for listening to the College of Career Clarity podcast, where we help your family move from overwhelmed and confused to motivated, clear and confident about your teen’s future. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and until next time, keep striving for clarity and confidence in your teen’s college journey. You.