Editor’s Note: This year’s National #TransferStudentWeek runs October 19-23, 2026. Learn how you can support “Start from Yes,” the Joint Statement on Credit Evaluation & Learning Mobility. During this week, CollegeSource also hosts its 9th Annual Transfer Week Webinar Series, which is free and open to all interested.
By Naomi Long, Government Relations Intern, AACRAO, and President of the GW Transfer Student Association
My name is Naomi, and I am the Government Relations intern for AACRAO. I am also a graduate of Brookdale Community College, a current senior at the George Washington University, and the President of the GW Transfer Student Association, which has given me a unique view of how institutional action, or the lack of it, can shape the transfer community and the sense of belonging every campus says it wants to build. National Transfer Student Week is a chance to elevate student voices and improve the transfer experience. From my work, I’ve found that effective programming does three things: it builds community, raises institutional awareness, and improves access.
There Is No Single Transfer Experience
One of the biggest mistakes university administrators can make is assuming that all transfer students experience and need the same things. In reality, transfers are made up of an incredibly diverse population. Generally, there are four types of transfer students, and most campuses serve all of them:
- Community college (vertical) transfers are “traditional” transfer students who start at a two-year institution and continue to a four-year institution.
- Four-year (lateral) transfers move from one four-year institution to another.
- International transfers completed coursework at a university abroad, outside of any study abroad or exchange program, and matriculated fully to a U.S. institution.
- Non-traditional transfers are typically older students who are working, parenting, serving, or returning to school after time away.
These groups differ in many ways, and some students may belong to more than one. They also overlap with other identities: low-income students, first-generation students, veterans, and non-traditional learners. Yet they tend to run into the same systemic barriers: finances, credit articulation, and integration into campus community.
The Risks of Institutional Inaction
In my experience working with transfer students to navigate institutional barriers, I’ve met very few people who express direct disdain for transfer students or treat them differently on purpose. It’s often the opposite. Institutions like mine express a strong desire to integrate transfer students into campus culture and academics.
Good intentions, however, cannot replace strategic and intentional planning. Transfer students often arrive separate from the traditional first-year orientation, and therefore friend groups and residential experiences have already started forming. When no one is responsible for designing the transfer experience, these individuals can fall through the cracks. Nobody decided to exclude them, but no one thought to include them either. This lack of intention is rarely malicious, but its effects are real:
- Lost credits.
- Extra semesters.
- Added debt.
- Students who struggle to adjust to a campus where they feel unwanted.
Transfer student programming needs to go beyond the first impressions on campus. Orientation is fantastic, but students can often feel overwhelmed by resources and deadlines, leading them to ignore or forget key tools and opportunities that are offered on campus. National Transfer Student Week is an opportunity to reverse the negative experiences transfer students have by elevating student voices and allowing students to feel heard and seen on a campus where they may feel forgotten.
What Effective Programming Looks Like
Building Community: Transfer students need peers who understand their experience. One of the most important functions of an organization like GW’s Transfer Student Association is to give new transfers the opportunity to interact with students of similar backgrounds to them, fostering feelings of belonging within our membership and on the larger campus. Community can’t be assumed. It has to be intentionally and purposefully built. The most effective way to ensure this on a campus is simple: empowering the students that are already integrated on campus to support the newest class of transfers. The GW Transfer Student Association frequently works within student life organizations such as our Office of Student Success, First Year Experience and Class Year Programming, and the Admissions Office in our monthly programming to ensure that students understand available resources go beyond student-run orgs and provide institution-wide platforms for students to voice their concerns.
Raising Institutional Awareness: College administrations can’t serve a population they don’t see. Programming during National Transfer Student Week can put transfer voices in front of decision-makers, whether through panels, data, or student stories. GW’s Elliot School of International Affairs has designed a “Coffee with the Dean” event exclusively for transfer students to do just that – raise concerns with a high-profile audience that can make tangible changes to the problems they encounter.
Improving Access: Access means clear credit articulation, financial aid that accounts for transfer timelines, and advising that begins before a student enrolls. Some of the biggest barriers that our students face are the product of a system that has been designed to work for students on the traditional freshman pathway, with deadlines that unintentionally exclude any student who doesn’t fall into that category. In other areas, simple miscommunications can be powerful in deterring students from engaging in programs. This year, my organization is working with the Office of Student Abroad and the Graduate School at the Elliott School of International Affairs to address widespread misconceptions about what transfer students can or can’t do during their time at GW. Programming like this builds the student relationship with these offices and allows practitioners access to a population they may not have considered before, while also expanding student access to resources our school already offers.
Transfer students bring experience, resilience, and fresh perspective to our campuses.
Too often I hear conversations on my campus about how we can attract new college students, and not enough about how to re-engage our nontraditional students with sustained effective programming that improves their experience and enhances our community. National Transfer Student Week is the time to ask whether your institution is working as hard to include transfers as it is to enroll new freshmen.
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