Would you like a second lease on your college journey? Is Brown University calling your name? If so, you might be pleased to know that transfer applicants to Brown often (but not always) stand a better chance of earning admission than first-year applicants. Ivy Coach will walk you through the historical transfer acceptance rate to give you a sense of how much love this Ivy League university gives to its transfer applicants, and to help you gauge your chances of transferring.

The Historical Transfer Acceptance Rate at Brown University (2026 – 2021)

Brown University Admission Cycle	Total Transfer Applications	Transfer Applications Accepted	Transfer Acceptance Rate	First-Year Acceptance Rate
2025-2026	TBD	TBD	TBD	5.35%
2024-2025	2,987	215	7.20%	5.65%
2023-2024	2,745	114	4.15%	5.16%
2022-2023	2,836	152	5.36%	5.08%
2021-2022	2,746	118	4.30%	5.00%
2020-2021	2,293	81	3.53%	5.40%

The historical acceptance rate data we’ve compiled above were drawn from Brown’s online archive of Common Data Sets. Some schools maintain a robust archive of such data, stretching back for decades, and others, such as Brown, only keep this repository of everything admissions up for a few years. But either way, this is more than enough data to give prospective transfers a firm understanding of how competitive this process is.

In many cases, including two of the five years for which we have data, transferring to Brown is actually less competitive than applying as a first-year! This was true for the recent 2024-2025 admission cycle, in which 215 transfers were admitted from a pool of 2,987 applicants, resulting in a 7.2% transfer acceptance rate compared to a 5.65% overall acceptance rate for first-year students that cycle, and for the Class of 2022-2023 cycle, in which the transfer accpetance rate was 5.36% compared to a first-year acceptance rate of 5.08%.

Why Brown Respects Transfer Applicants

A common misconception is that transfer applicants must surely be the second fiddle to first-year applicants. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. Elite colleges across the country, and highly selective schools like Brown in particular, have a ton of respect for transfer applicants. And why? They round out the diversity of any student cohort and contribute a rich array of lived experiences to campus.

Admissions officers have a responsibility to curate a diverse student body in every sense of the word, from balancing gender ratios and academic interests to socioeconomic differences. And transfer students, who often hail from community colleges, low-income communities, the armed services, and non-traditional life paths, are the perfect candidates to contribute to this diversity. After all, wouldn’t a campus exclusively composed of students who matriculated straight from high school, who aren’t bringing a unique, adult perspective to the table, be a bit bland?

What’s more, transfer applicants are data ghosts that can enter a prestigious campus without adversely impacting the academic statistics reported in The Common Data Set, which go on to inform such things as college rankings (and yes, colleges like Brown absolutely do care about keeping up with the Joneses by keeping these figures up to snuff). First-year data must be reported to The Common Data Set, but transfer applicants fly under the radar and can be admitted to no detriment to the institution.

Ivy Coach’s Assistance With Transfer Admission to Brown

We at Ivy Coach are no strangers to facilitating a successful transfer application to Brown University. Our team of former elite college admissions officers will work with you or your child to optimize the odds of transferring to Brown and alleviate the stress of figuring this out on your own. To get started with us, fill out Ivy Coach’s complimentary consultation form, and we’ll be in touch with an outline of services.