I was watching TV and the local community college had an ad. In it the voice over said something like “our credits transfer to most four year institutions”.
Now what four year institutions wouldn’t accept an acredited community college’s credits in a transfer? I am assuming Ivy League level schools would sort of laugh you out the door if you applied for a transfer…or would they?
Anyway, I just wonder what could be meant by that disclaimer. I had no problem getting some community college credit transferred to a state university - but would they have been accepted at many private universities? The kind that a schmoe like me could never enter in a million years…
You wouldn’t have any problem getting your credits from a community college accepted if you were to transfer to an Ivy League college. The problem would be to be accepted for transfer at the Ivy League college. The average person at a community college is one whose high school grades and SAT (or ACT) scores are not particularly impressive. Getting into an Ivy League college (or some similar college which admits mostly students with very good high school grades and SAT scores) isn’t easy as a freshman, and it’s actually more difficult if you’re applying to transfer in as an upperclassman. After all, not many students drop out of Ivy League colleges (or similar highly selective colleges), so they have very few spaces to fill in their upper classes. Many such colleges simply don’t accept any transfers at all since the time spent reading applications isn’t worth their time. But in the unlikely case where a student at a community college has very good high school grades, very good grades in his college courses, and high SAT scores, they might accept such a student. At that point, yes, they will give him credit for his courses at the community college.
Here in WI you can go all the way through an Associate degree in several computer fields, and only take ONE course that transfers to the UW 4-year school. The community college offers a limited number of “transfer” courses, that the state 4-year colleges are mandated by law to accept.
There are SEVERAL accrediting standards organization, frequently regional. So if you move to another part of the country, it may be that your credits won’t be accepted by even another community college, let alone a 4-year school.
Remember that an increasing proportion of CC students are continuing education adults who already possess BA/MA degrees and are seeking to enhance their skills in a specialized area or otherwise improve their knowledge of a subject matter.
“our credits transfer to most four year institutions”
Are you sure the disclaimer wasn’t something more like, “Most credits transfer to 4-year institutions”? Because as somebody already mentioned, if you are planning to transfer you commonly lose most if not all of your work because the new university doesn’t accept many of the classes. This also happens when tranferring between 4 year universities, although you tend to lose less.
tsunamisurfer writes:
> Remember that an increasing proportion of CC students are
> continuing education adults who already possess BA/MA
> degrees and are seeking to enhance their skills in a specialized
> area or otherwise improve their knowledge of a subject matter.
And that’s why I wrote “the average person at a community college.” Obviously in any group of students at any college there are a few that had top high school grades and high SAT scores and who, had they chosen to apply as seniors in high school, could have gotten into a very selective college like one in the Ivy League. But it’s not a very large proportion. In any case, that wasn’t the point of my post. My point was that the problem is getting admitted to an Ivy League college, not having your credits accepted.
Ivy Leagues (and quite a few other universities) are fairly notorious for not accepting transfer credits in many cases. Credits from Advanced Placement tests don’t always count, either- it can vary by department and can result in a “test-up” instead of actual credit.
The rationale behind this is that you’re not getting a <pick a college> education via transfer credits, and their courses are intristically more worthwhile than any other colleges.
To give you an example, my University of Delaware English credits did not transfer to Dartmouth. I knew this, so I took the AP English exam, which gave me credit for Freshman English. My AP U.S. History credits did not give me History credit, but tested me up a level in History.