If your student comes home for the holidays unenthusiastic about their school and considering transferring, your first impulse might be to tell them to tough it out for the year and reconsider come summer. While that’s probably good parenting advice, it might not be good financial advice. In fact, students who are thinking of transferring are usually best off making the decision sooner rather than later.

Why? Because most schools offer substantially larger financial aid packages to incoming freshmen than to transfer students, and only those with less than a set number of post-high school credits qualify as incoming freshmen. Furthermore, once students have accumulated a certain number of college credits, their transfer application is based on their college GPA, not high school. A student who did well in high school but then underperformed in college will probably want their high school GPA to be the basis of an admissions decision.

The differences can be huge. For example, the highest merit award for incoming freshmen at the University of Oregon is $14,000 annually (a student receiving the Summit and Presidential award), and those scholarships renew automatically for four years. Transfer students, on the other hand, are eligible for a maximum of $3,600 in merit aid and must reapply every year. Similarly, the University of Florida offers up to $10,000 in merit aid to freshmen; as for transfer students, two community college transfers receive $4,000 each, and 10 other transfer students receive between $1,000 to $2,000 in one-time scholarships.

If your student is thinking of transferring, they should research transfer vs freshman requirements and financial aid eligibility at the school they’d like to transfer to ASAP because this is one instance where a quick decision is often the best decision.

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