Graeme Banks & TransferU
EARLY ENTREPRENEURIAL EXCELLENCE
Photographed on location at Post Road Studio, Bedford
Graeme Banks is the Founder, CEO, and 100% owner of TransferU LLC - which is already established as a leading platform for college transfers. At only twenty-one years old, his babyface belies his maturity. He has all the youthful energy and charisma of a kid just starting his senior year of college, but already demonstrates the wisdom and judgement of a wizened businessman. He has big goals and is confident about achieving whatever he sets out to do, but his enthusiasm is tempered in respect and gratitude. …Meeting Graeme the entrepreneur feels like it could be a parallel experience to having met Steve Jobs at age twenty-one, just when he founded Apple.
“We moved to Bedford Village when I was five. I have an identical twin brother, Liam, and a two-year older brother, Everett, and we all played sports and all went to Fox Lane. I played baseball,” Graeme recalls. “...I had an entirely happy experience here as a kid and I’m constantly thinking how lucky I am to have grown-up here! Being an identical twin increased our popularity - everyone always said ‘Hi!’ but was never really sure who they were talking to! I really liked my teachers and, most importantly, I always felt a real sense of belonging to a community. In particular, I was and remain quite involved with the Mt. Kisco Food Pantry, having started-out as a volunteer during my junior year of high school and then founding and serving on the Pantry’s Youth Advisory Council for about five years. …I’ve always felt like when I see a problem I want to find a solution and then work to bring about the fix. I love a challenge!”
“When I graduated from Fox Lane, I went to the University of Delaware and my brother went to the University of Maryland,” Graeme explains. “Twenty-two days into it, I knew Delaware wasn’t for me and determined to transfer. Where I’d felt a part of the community in Bedford, I felt no involvement at Delaware. I visited Miami of Ohio, where my mother went to college, and I accepted their offer in November. I did a semester of student teaching in the spring, and resumed my college studies at Miami of Ohio, majoring in pre-law and education, in January 2024. …What I found obviously and terribly wrong with the whole transfer process was that the school you are transferring to will not give you an analysis of what credits it will accept before the time when you have to make a decision which college you’re choosing! This means both the academic risk of having to re-take classes you took at the previous school and the financial risk of having to pay for those retakes and any additional courses required by the new school to fulfill a major or other requirements, and the potential of an additional semester or more of school!”
“Because I’d managed to transfer, my mom offered my services during the summer in 2025 helping a family friend to effect a transfer after two years at a community college,” Graeme continues. “The pitfalls in the system were even more blatant! Neither private nor public universities offered any specific guidelines or guidance on credit transfers - even in the case of transferring credits from a community college to a public university in the same State. And there was no automation of results available for the purpose of gaining any sense of how each university had historically treated credits being transferred from any other particular school. …And because the girl I was helping simply couldn’t afford the economic risk of having to pay for a lot of retakes, she ultimately had to choose a less prestigious university because the probability of losing credits in the transfer was lower!”
“I determined I was going to do something about it!” Graeme declares. “I did a bunch of research and found that transfer students lose an average of 43% of their earned credits, or approximately a full semester of work, and that 40% of transfer students lose 100% of their earned credits! And there’s total lost direct and indirect spending incurred of approximately Fifteen Billion Dollars per year! …I became the Chairman of the Dean’s Leadership Council at Miami of Ohio and my Dean was totally supportive - telling me I was capable of inventing a solution to the problem, allowing me to shadow her at business meetings to get a glimpse of how things get done, and allocating whatever of the school’s resources that would assist in my entrepreneurial development. …I learned how to program and, because I get up at about 4 a.m. and go at it until about 11 p.m. every day, I had plenty of time to devote to developing a prototype. And, over the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I went on a listening tour, visiting dozens of university admissions departments to learn as much as I could about how to improve - or actually create - a system for organized transfer from one university to another, and to get their buy-in. It doesn’t feel like work - I get excited just talking about it!”
“We went live with TransferU, with patents and trademarks in place, during the 2026 winter break of my junior year, and our market acceptance thus far has been remarkable!” Graeme says proudly. “We already have about 2,500 of the total of about 8,000 colleges ingested and believe we will shortly accomplish our goal of 4,000 colleges, including all public institutions. And we haven’t done any advertising yet. …The participating universities pay a subscription fee, so it’s free for students. And in just about half-a-year, thousands of students have already used the platform. TransferU enables students to see exactly what credits will be accepted by the college they’re looking at from the college they’re attending. And, as we expand the platform, we’ll be able to provide an even more robust analysis of college-to-college transfers, so the process can be as informed as when students are first choosing a college.”
“I’m already receiving a lot of recognition and accolades,” Graeme says with a smile of wonder and without a hint of braggadocia. “I’ve even been invited into the Google universe, and so we’re participating in the Google For Startups Cloud Program and in some Google-sponsored conferences. I was one of the youngest presenters at a conference in April. It’s been a fantastic journey - and it’s just getting started. …But, I still intend to go back to Miami of Ohio for a final year, and will earn a Bachelor of Arts as well as a Masters degree in Higher Education Administration. I’m still just a 21-year-old boy who likes to hang out with friends, go to the beach, and take long walks. And I’m still living with my parents!”
“My motto is to believe in yourself!” Graeme proclaims. “Entrepreneurship is really all about problem solving. Don’t do anything you dread doing! Stay on track! And do whatever you can to help other people! …I’ve met with a couple of people who’ve told me I had no idea what I was doing, that TransferU was a horrible idea, and that I’d need a ton of financing to get the business off the ground. …At least one of those guys was trying to steal the business!”
Pressed to say who he would have for an imaginary dinner party, Graeme considered the possibilities and listed: “My family; Martha Stewart - because she’s a role model; Michael Jordan - for the way he always went 100%; Trina Ward Fontaine, who runs The Pantry in Mt Kisco; Anna Kennoff - who is a close friend and entrepreneur; Emily Simoness, who runs Plus One, a charity focused on community and civic engagement; as many teachers as we could find - including Sue Ostrovsky, who was the Principal at Fox Lane Middle and High School when I attended and who played a big part in guiding my early education, and Chris Violante, my Advanced Placement U.S. History teacher at Fox Lane, who was engaging every single day of class, and; one random person from the subway.”
