Only in the past decade has the federal government begun requiring colleges to post statistics about transfer students. As a result, there is not much readily-accessible information about historical trends about transfer students. The United States Department of Education did a tracking study in 2003 to analyze the progress of students who started at community colleges in that year, and found that of those planning to transfer to a four-year college, only 15% of them had actually done so within a three-year time interval. Record keeping and data about transfer admissions is not as complete as comparable data for freshman admissions; it varies by school. Researching transfer possibilities is generally more complex than applying to college from high school. Advisors suggest one method to get information about specific schools is to search online and use the Common Data Set:
The Common Data Set is a document that four-year schools across the country complete that contains lots of information on such topics as admission criteria, freshman academic profile, campus safety and transfer admissions. You can often find a college's Common Data Set by Googling that term and the name of the institution.
-- Lynn O'Shaughnessy in US News, 2010
So-called "transfer friendly" colleges which seek transfer applicants often have a transfer coordinator, housing arrangements for transfer students, an orientation program for transfer students, and are likely to accept most or all of a student's credits from their previous college.