Transfer Credit

Transfer Credit Evaluation

Many students coming to Penn State World Campus hope to be able to transfer the credits earned from other colleges or universities to Penn State. If you attended another college or university before enrolling at Penn State, you'll need to provide official transcripts to the Admissions Office for every institution that you attended. Please note that official transcripts cannot come from you; they must be sent directly to Penn State from the college or university where your course work was attempted. If your school requires an email address to send a transcript electronically, please provide them with admissions@psu.edu. Additionally, please submit your current class schedule, if applicable.

Many of you may have already received a communication from the Undergraduate Admissions Office, called the "Evaluation of Transferable Credits." This evaluation determines the courses for which you can receive credit, either as direct equivalents of Penn State courses or as General Credit (no direct equivalency to a Penn State course). When reading this document, you will see that your courses have been given one of many equivalencies. An explanation of these equivalencies can be found on the Transfer Credit Equivalencies web page Links to an external site.. If you haven't seen this communication, it can be found in the Communications section of your Home Page in LionPATH (see Figure 4.1).

Screenshot of LionPATH home page with communications section circled

Figure 4.1. LionPATH home page

When reading the "Evaluation of Transferable Credits," you may see courses that are marked as XFRPEN. This means that the Admissions Office cannot make a determination on how this course may transfer without reviewing a course syllabus. Instructions on where these syllabi should be sent can be found on the "Evaluation of Transferable Credits" document. To track the evaluation of these pending courses, you can use the "Transfer Credit Report" in LionPATH. Running this report will be covered in detail in an upcoming module.

What Will Transfer to Penn State?

This is a question that is on the minds of many students, so let's take a moment to address it. Penn State will accept credit from courses taken at any regionally accredited institution where a grade of C or higher was earned. The courses must also belong to an area of learning in which Penn State offers instruction. For example, Penn State doesn't offer a paralegal program, so courses of this type will not transfer.

One question that's often asked is whether Penn State has a time limit on transferring coursework. The answer is twofold. While there is no "expiration date" for courses being accepted for credit at Penn State, the college that houses your degree program may have specific rules governing courses used for major requirements. This is often the case in areas like business or technology, where change can be rapid and course content is continually updated.

In addition to college-level coursework, there are multiple other sources of credit that may transfer in to Penn State. These credits are typically from exams or experiential learning, such as the following:

What Will Not Transfer? 

While much of your previous work will likely transfer in to Penn State in some way, there are some notable exceptions to this, such as the following:

  • any course in which you earned a C- or lower,
  • courses from nonaccredited institutions,
  • courses from nationally accredited institutions,
  • grades or grade-point averages (only your credit will transfer in to Penn State), and
  • courses where there is no similar Penn State offering (see the paralegal example).

An Important Note

Now that we have looked over the criteria used to determine if and how your credits will transfer in, we need to take a moment to address a very important issue.  Even if a course meets all of the criteria to allow it to be transferred in to Penn State, your specific degree program may not have anywhere for that course to be used other than your electives area. This doesn't mean that you aren't getting credit for the course you took previously, only that the course doesn't match the required courses in your program closely enough to be used in fulfillment of a degree requirement. 

It's important to Penn State to honor all of your past academic work, but that needs to be balanced against the integrity of the degree you're here to achieve. In order to perform this delicate balancing act, World Campus employs a multistep review process for transfer credit that we'll take a look at next.

Further Review

Once a determination has been made regarding what credit comes in to Penn State and which of your courses are direct equivalents, your courses are now ready to be reviewed for how they can best be used within your intended major. This process involves a Penn State World Campus transfer credit specialist and representatives from your academic program reviewing your transfer credits to determine how they might be used to fulfill degree requirements. Let's take a look at this process and the documentation that you may be asked to provide.

In order to use general credit courses toward degree requirements, your academic program must approve their use. A transfer credit specialist at Penn State World Campus will review your courses that have been awarded as general credit to evaluate them and make recommendations to the academic program for their use.

During this process, you may be contacted and asked to provide further documentation, typically a course syllabus, to assist in the final decision as to where your courses will apply. It's in your best interest to supply the requested documentation, since it's likely that the evaluation cannot move forward without it. The syllabus, unlike a simple course description, allows Penn State to evaluate the course for use in your program by making an accurate comparison to Penn State courses. Once this evaluation is complete, you'll be sent a preliminary document called a What-If Report, showing you what courses were accepted and where they could be used to fulfill degree requirements. Generating and understanding this document, also called an Academic Requirements Report, will be covered in detail in an upcoming module.

Military-Specific Information

The following link provides military-specific information on how credits transfer into Penn State: Transfer and Testing Credits.