Transfer Student Still Feels Close to Home

Falak Suteri grew up in New Delhi and moved Michigan to start her college career at U-M Dearborn. She found her way to LSA—and herself.

At first glance, transferring to LSA as an international student might seem like an insurmountable task. We sat down with psychology major Falak Suteri to debunk that myth.

Suteri is a native of New Delhi, where she grew up speaking a mix of Hindi, English, and Urdu. As a graduate of an international high school, she had always planned on coming to the United States for her university education, but it took a while to find the perfect place for her. She started college at U-M Dearborn and eventually transferred to LSA on U-M’s Ann Arbor campus. Her own story, which spans continents and campuses, has informed the way she advises others who are going through the international transfer process. Here are her takeaways.

Culture shock can come in waves. 

When she first moved to Dearborn, Suteri felt welcomed by the predominantly Middle Eastern community there. “It almost felt like I never left home,” she says, referencing the cultural diversity of New Delhi. “The real culture shock was when I came to Ann Arbor.” 

By virtue of its size and breadth, the Ann Arbor campus showcased even more types of people and interests, academic and otherwise. It was overwhelming; Suteri remembers thinking, “Oh, this is what a new environment truly looks like.” 

New friendships can bloom at any moment. 

“My biggest issue was making friends,” Suteri says. She recalls feeling nervous about how she would start her LSA experience without having lived in first-year dorms, where she believed most students had already formed permanent bonds. 

But social opportunities awaited. “The way I got to integrate myself within the Ann Arbor community was to talk to anyone in class,” she says. The wide array of LSA courses allowed her to connect with fellow students who had similar interests, and she branched out from there. Suteri also embraced her fellow transfer community at the Transfer Student Center; she found that they could share their experiences and work together to help other students make the transition to Ann Arbor. 

The liberal arts and sciences experience supports all kinds of students. 

From high school onward, Suteri has always had an interest in psychology. Now her major at LSA, she explores human behaviors through quantitative methods. Her minor in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences (QMSS) allows her to explore coding, a skill she had never thought about acquiring previously. 

“In the social sciences, there aren’t many people who come from computational backgrounds,” she says. She is now putting her skills to the test in the Personality Processes and Outcomes Laboratory, directed by Aidan Wright, professor of psychology and psychiatry. 

But LSA has also allowed Suteri to investigate a more personal interest: her South Asian background. “The farther I got away from home, and the longer I stayed away from it, the closer I wanted to be to it,” she says. Suteri explores the languages, cultures, and religions of India in her Asian studies minor, where she feels more connected to other members of the diaspora. 

LSA provides many resources for helping prospective transfer students.

Suteri’s biggest piece of advice? “Get on top of the things you need to start working on,” she says. Keeping up-to-date on all the forms is a must. 

She also advises getting in touch with the International Center and the Transfer Student Center, two resources which have been invaluable. “I think the most important thing that I feel like a lot of people don’t do—and I feel like I could have done more myself—was to communicate with the departments over here,” she reflects. Now as a transfer ambassador, she tells prospective transfer students that no question is too small. 

When looking towards the future, Suteri is eager to engage more with what she has learned as an undergraduate. She is in the process of applying to Ph.D. programs in linguistics, where she hopes to learn more about language acquisition and bilingualism through the lens of South Asian languages. But her experience as an international transfer student at LSA has taught her more than just academics. 

“It helped me bridge the gap between who I am becoming as someone who has immigrated to a different country versus who I was when I was living in India,” she says.

Photography by Doug Coombe

This story is part of a series focusing on LSA’s support for transfer students, initially published during national Transfer Student Week in October 2025. Learn more about transferring to LSA.