Abstract Two-neutron and two-proton transfer reactions have been analyzed in the present work. These kind of transfer reactions is an excellent tool to get insights into the short-range correlations on nucleons in a nuclear state. The direct and sequential two-particle transfer mechanisms, for which the valence particles can be transferred, were compared one with other to probe the populated nuclear states. Large-scale shell model calculations were performed to obtained the spectroscopic amplitudes for one and two valence particles.