Plan ahead if you want to transfer schools.
College students often transfer from one school to another at some time during their education. There are several steps you can take to minimize the possibility that your credits will not transfer to the new institution. With some foresight and planning, you should be able to transfer most, if not all, of your credits from your old school to your new one.
Instructions
1. Take as many general courses as you can at your first school. Most colleges and universities require that most, if not all, of your hours in your particular major be taken at their institutions. For example, if you first are going to a community college, try to stay out of classes that involve your major, as tempting as it may be to take some early on in your college career. Courses in American history, college algebra, and general sciences that are out of your major's field of expertise are usually safe.
2. Ensure that your classes come from an accredited school. Schools will not likely take credit hours from unaccredited sources, but it is possible to find out whether your first school's credits will be recognized by your second school. For example, the University of Maryland lists the accrediting bodies that accredit schools from which it will accept credit for transferring students on its Transfer Credit Center on the Web.
(See Reference 4.)
3. Pick up a copy of the credit-transfer policy of the college to which you want to transfer. The school may require you to take a certain number of hours in your major at their school, or you may have to take an exam to prove you learned in your classes what they would teach in theirs. This is applicable to various types of courses you may have taken, including classroom and Internet courses. Knowing the school's policy will also allow you to plan which courses you will want to transfer.
4. Try to pick your new college from among the universities in your state that participate in a credit-transfer program. For example, students who attend Blinn College in Texas automatically can have all of their credits transferred to Texas A&M University and several other Texas colleges and universities. Also, Texas offers a common-course-numbering system to make it easy to figure out which courses transfer to different ones within the state.
5. Visit with your enrollment advisor at your new school. You will likely need to provide syllabi from your courses that you want to transfer if a question comes up about the content of a course you have taken. This is especially true if you take electives that are very specific and not general. The enrollment advisor will help make the determination about which courses will transfer for you. You may be able to make your case to the advisor to have more of your hours transferred.
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