Credit Transfer?

[Lazarus]

How does transfer work? Does it work once you apply to the college, or once you get the credit do you immediately send it to the school?

[AJ_Atlanta]

Can you give us a little more info on what you are asking?

If it's something like a credit transfer from Study.com or Straighterline; you request it and tell them the school and it happens in their back-offices. But that really depends on the parties involved.

A traditional college to college transfer involves a transcript request (and usually a fee) from the originating school to the "new" where they undergo a evaluation process accepting or not accepting at their seemly random discretion

[Lazarus]

I'm just wondering if you have to be attending the college you are transferring the credits to. I don't really have a specific case.

My other question is: Do I have to transfer my credits immediately to the college I want to attend once I get them, or can I wait and hold on to my credits, and transfer them when I apply?

[jsd]

If you're not enrolled or in the process of applying and a college receives your transcript (ACE or traditional transcript), they'll have no idea what to do with them or why they're receiving them and likely won't hold on to them for long.

You don't need to send them immediately to the college. For ACE credit, you should get them on your ACE transcript fairly soon after completing the course. But you can bank them there while you build them up before you send them to your college, thereby saving money as you'll only be paying one ACE transcript fee.

[Synicaal]

I'm just wondering if you have to be attending the college you are transferring the credits to. I don't really have a specific case.

My other question is: Do I have to transfer my credits immediately to the college I want to attend once I get them, or can I wait and hold on to my credits, and transfer them when I apply?

As jsd said, you must at least apply to the school. Otherwise they wont know what to do with the transcripts they receive. Depending on the school even if your enrolled in a course they wont apply any credits unless you are enrolled in a degree program. I sent Oakton my HVCC transcript to see what they would do with it and they did nothing with it. I am an enrolled student paying for a class but they didn't add anything to my student account for credits.

[cookderosa]

How does transfer work? Does it work once you apply to the college, or once you get the credit do you immediately send it to the school?

Credits earned have no way of appearing anywhere until you send them there. So, if you took a class at your local community college, your records would stay there forever unless you sent a copy somewhere new. In almost every case, when you attend college, they'll want ALL of your credits earned from EVERY previous source.

When you apply to a college, you'll generally fill out an application and simultaneously request records from previous schools. That process can take some time, but you don't want to start it until you at least have an application open at the new college because the new college won't know where to file random incoming records. But in general, the whole thing can be sorted out in a month or so.

If you pass tests that allow you to directly forward scores at the time of testing (CLEP, DSST) you can either take advantage of that option, or wait until you've taken all your tests and send 1 transcript with all your passing scores. There is a fee to do that, it's about $40 I think (total, not per test). Sending at the time of testing is free, but again, you'd have to have something open somewhere to receive them, and not everyone has picked a college or applied while they take CLEP tests.

If you use a college credit business (Straighterline, ALEKS, Saylor, Study.com, Sophia, etc.) you'll have 1 additional step. These scores should be placed on an ACE transcript. You'll have to create an ACE account and username (free/fast) and then as you complete courses, you simply go into your ACE account and "add a course" to your account. ACE will follow up to confirm that you did actually pass, and then they will officially put it on your ACE transcript. While some of the companies have partnerships with colleges and allow you to do a direct forward, you still should put it on your ACE transcript. Having it on your ACE transcript means you can use it forever wherever, if you skip this step, other colleges can't accept it in transfer off of a college transcript since it's not original credit from that college. When you have an ACE transcript with courses, you'll then send it on to your new college. If you are still adding courses, you'll have to send a new updated transcript later.

[dfrecore]

A traditional college to college transfer involves a transcript request (and usually a fee) from the originating school to the "new" where they undergo a evaluation process accepting or not accepting at their seemly random discretion

Yes - every school has their own process and requirements about credits, and get to apply them as they wish. Every single school will treat other school's transfer credits differently. The only "guarantee" you have is if you transfer from one school to another where they 2 schools have an articulation agreement, showing exactly how credits will transfer in - this is very common between the community and state colleges, where you are doing an in-state transfer, or local transfer. Like a California CC to a California state college/university, or a San Diego area CC and a San Diego area private university. They will have the articulation agreements available for everyone to see, so they can plan out their transfers easily.

Many of us on this forum have many credits that can't be used at a school we transfer to because the school doesn't give credit for them, or else they just don't fit into the degree program that we want. Some of us have TONS of "unused" credits floating around.

[AJ_Atlanta]

I think someone mentioned one state that legally mandated transfers, I don't recall the state only that is one area of education the federal government could actually help with

My .02 at least