When Sarah Palin was nominated for vice president, her college transcripts got a lot of attention — she’d attended four (or was it five? six?) different schools on the way to her degree.

But Palin’s experience wasn’t as unusual as some made out. Multiple-transfer students aren’t common, but they’re growing less rare all the time, and these days almost a third of all undergraduates transfer at least once before earning their degree.

As a recent article points out, Barack Obama was a transfer student himself, as were six presidents before him. Jimmy Carter was a multiple transfer — he enrolled at Georgia Southwestern College and Georgia Tech for a year each before landing at the US Naval Academy.