anybody know about transferring FROM a four-year college to another one?

[MsRobyn]

@Ruken

The better the school you’re transferring from, the easier it is to transfer credits. Many schools would laugh at you if you tried to transfer credits from a typical two-year school. The better the school you’re transferring to, the more difficult the transfer, especially for courses in your major.
And as mentioned above, most schools will have a minimum number of credits you need from them in order to get a diploma from them.

Not every school is good at everything. I’ve known people who transferred from “brand-name” universities to mine who have had problems transferring because the quality of the program at the “brand-name” school wasn’t nearly as good as the one at my little second-tier school. In fact, that’s why they transferred; they were sick of paying $25,000 a year when they could get a better education for a quarter of that.

Robin

[MsRobyn]

@Voyager

I’m not sure if California doing it is something special to CA (and some other states) or a sign of the times. In NY there were community colleges, but no one went there to move to a city college or a state university. When I was a grad student at the University of Illinois none of my students came from 2 year schools. State colleges are a lot more expensive then they used to be, which might explain it.

Pennsylvania does this, too. Our local CC has all sorts of agreements with various four-year colleges to ensure that all credits taken there transfer appropriately and that there’s a place for the CC graduate. In fact, in Texas, meeting certain criteria ensures that you will transfer into the state college of your choice.

CC is cheaper, for one thing, and there’s a lot less pressure on the student to decide a four-year college and major during high school. One of my high school classmates started in the transfer track in CC and ended up in a technical program instead. He didn’t go through the last two years of college and ended up becoming a successful network guy making a lot more than the CS and IT people who went for a bachelor’s degree.

Robin

[Ruken]

@MsRobyn

Not every school is good at everything. I’ve known people who transferred from “brand-name” universities to mine who have had problems transferring because the quality of the program at the “brand-name” school wasn’t nearly as good as the one at my little second-tier school. In fact, that’s why they transferred; they were sick of paying $25,000 a year when they could get a better education for a quarter of that.

Robin

Like I wrote, if your classes do not meet the required level of academic rigor, don’t expect the credits to automatically transfer.

As for “brand-name” schools, that’s a completely different matter that could warrant a lengthy thread. I taught premed kids at Yale; I worry about their future patients.

A good friend went to a somewhat middling (reputation-wise) public school for undergrad, and received a much better chemistry background than a grad-school classmate who went to an Ivy school for undergrad.

Then again, the bigger names often have more free money. Yale could be free for someone (who can get in) whereas they’d have to pay big money for Quinnipiac.

But I’m diverging even further off-topic.

[tesseract]

Thanks for all the responses and thoughts – this gives us a lot more to think about and help with what to ask.

[Clothahump]

@tesseract

My husband has 60 units from two out-of-state four-year colleges in the state of Georgia. He wants to go to a California State University school. Does transferring from a community college work the same as transferring from a four-year? The answer to this answer to this question is not readily available on the website – it seems only to talk about community college transfers. We can call tomorrow but thought I’d see if anyone knows. Anyone have experience with this?

If the community college is properly accredited, there should be no problem. The big one is accreditation by one of the Regional Association of Colleges and Schools. If it has that, the credits will go anywhere.

The issue will be whether they will be accepted toward a specific major or as electives.

[Khadaji]

When I did it there were almost no issues. The issues I had were annoying, but not real problems.

The issues came when the new college mapped credits from the old college to their curriculum. So Philosophy 101 logic at the old college mapped to Philosophy 301 in the new - which meant I STILL had to take Philosophy 101 and burn an elective on Phil 301. No big deal, except it made it tight for me to try to graduate in the time frame I wanted.

Beyond that, I just went to the new college and got the forms and did whatever they asked me to do.

This was 25 years ago.