Is it possible for my school to not accept credits from another school?

Question

I'm wanting to take a few 1 hour classes @ a community college (cheap). Then I'd like to transfer them to my uni. Is it common for a school to not accept credits? Don't they usually just give you unclassified credits that work as electives?

I just need elective hours. I don't want it to account for any "required" courses.

Answer 1

If a school is regionally accredited, all other regionally accredited schools have no choice but to accept transfer of credit. However, you are correct. Often coursework is transferred in and does not fit into a new program. That credit winds up appearing on the transcript as miscellaneous elective credits.

Another factor is that most colleges and universities will only allow a limited amount of credit transferred to apply toward their degree plan. Some schools allow as many as 60 credit hours of transfer credit. Others allow far less.

Answer 2

Not necessarily. It depends upon what the classes are (are they considered academic or trade classes) and whether the community college is accredited or not. There is also a limit to how many classes you may transfer, so if you already have the maximum, they may not take any more. Beyond that, even if they do accept the courses, there is no guarantee that they will count toward your degree - for example, if you need upper division electives, community college credits won't fill those requirements.

Answer 3

I work in a university but not all classes transfer in from the community colleges or other colleges/universities. We have transfer agreements for most of the General Education courses with the community colleges, but if students take electives from there we can't always use them for our program requirements. If students have taken upper division courses from other universities, they can petition the department to accept some of those courses; we only allow a certain number of credits to be transferred in, though.

Hope that helps!