Transfer Credit Equivalency Calculator

This matters because you fill in four years with gen ed classes only to find that half don’t apply towards your desired university. Why? Schools tracks courses differently. It doesn’t matter what you accomplished; rather, it’s about whether two universities’ course-tracking systems speaks the same language.

Enter your credits into the tool. Input the rules of the new school. Let the calculator do the math for you. Avoid mistakes. Understand state of your transcript before you submit an application.

How to Check If Your Credits Will Transfer

The initial stumbling block was unit conversion. How many semesters long was that class? Was it a quarter? You might of earned an ECTS unit if you went abroad. Those aren’t interchangeable terms, they reflect differing weights assigned by universities for academics, and for how much time those academics spent sitting in a classroom. If your quarter courses is stretching into the semester credits, congratulations! Your credits are growing with extra weight of a semester’s worth of work.

But that still doesn’t address the larger issue. Policy filters muddle things up even more. The next hurdle involve residency requirements and grade cutoffs. For most institutions, they’ll only count courses with grades of C or better. So if you recieved a C- in a challenging science course, that credit could be subtracted from the transfer equation. It is not because you’re dumb. Because it’s a bureaucratic means of gatekeeping. Before assuming a course will transfer, find out what the lowest passing grade is. With the calculator, you can tweak that bar and observe how strict policies may lowers your grand total.

There’s also the problem with courses that don’t quite match up. You see a line item on your transcript that says “Introduction to Psychology.” But what exactly did you take? How do you know if it was psychology 101 or biology 101 or whatever else? You’ll need to look at the syllabus. What if the receiving school decides it’s a generic elective instead of something that should count towards your major? That could mess up your graduation date. Why pay for time that doesn’t get you closer to graduating? With the tool, you can estimate the match percentage. In other words, it provides an estimated view of how many credits are realy going to help you graduate versus just fill the pool.

The last two walls are caps and residency requirements. For a bachelors degree, most schools cap credit transfers at between 60 and 90 units. In addition, they require that you take at least 25-30 percent of your courses at the university. The so called “residency” requirement. That residency requirement is meant as a revenue protection. After all, if they don’t make you come to school, they won’t be able to charge you for the last chunk of your education! The calculator will take these residency requirements away from your existing units to show you exactly what units you have left to fulfill at your desired school.

On the page, there’s a table of references for those conversions so you can check it yourself. That 3-credit class in the US? Expect it to convert to something like 2-credits if it’s from the UK and closer to 1-credit if it’s from Australia or Europe. This way you don’t freak out when you see fewer credits than expected. You’re not losing information. You’re just losing the way the receiving institution is willing to package up your information.

Once you know what factors are at play, it alters how you view your upcoming semesters. You no longer see class names; you read through their syllabi. You check the transfer articulation agreements before registration. You understand that sometimes getting a B in a transfer course can be better then an A- in a course which does not articulate. Getting credits isn’t everything. You want the correct credits that will make it through the filter.

The calculator shows you the figures. Your plan tells you if they’ll mean anything. Focus on the major map and the residency requirement, and the other math tends to fall into place.