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Subject:
University transfer credits - how it works in general?
Category: Reference, Education and News > Education Asked by: vidy-ga List Price: $2.00 |
Posted:
22 May 2006 12:14 PDT
Expires: 21 Jun 2006 12:14 PDT Question ID: 731371 |
Hi, how does the US system of transfer credits work in universities? Suppose that I switch schools from A, where I am doing my masters and not yet completed to B, where I got admission into PhD. And I wish that I complete my masters by transfering the remaining required credits from B; Will the credits that I earn from B and use for A be applied for both the degrees? Or will it count only for the masters degree at A and I will need to take additional credits to finally finish my PhD? |
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There is no answer at this time. |
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Subject:
Re: University transfer credits - how it works in general?
From: thursdaylast23-ga on 22 May 2006 15:39 PDT |
If I understand your situation correctly, you are planning to leave your current graduate program at School A and transfer those credits into a master?s program at School B (where you have been accepted into the Ph.D. program). Then you will go on to complete the Ph.D. at School B. First of all, you need to know that a definitive answer to your question is probably not possible. Other than the widespread practice of granting transfer credit only for courses in which the grade is B or higher, policies involving the transfer of graduate credits vary from institution to institution, and even from program to program within the same institution. There may be additional rules that limit the hours that may be transferred. For example, some grad schools will not accept for transfer credit graduate courses in which undergraduate seniors were allowed to enroll, which is perfectly acceptable at other institutions. Also, transfer credits are usually given on a case-by-case basis, and credit received can vary from student to student, depending on a variety of factors. Secondly, regarding transfer credit from one master?s program to another, in general, most programs will allow you to transfer in only a certain number of graduate credits. I know this from past personal experience and from scanning a number of current grad school policies. Depending on the number of hours you have already taken, School B might not allow you to transfer all those hours into their master?s program. Usually transfer credit is assigned through a process of special application and must be approved by the governing dean/senior administrator under whom your particular program falls. Also, some institutions will consider your application for transfer credit only after you have been in residence for a semester/quarter at their institution. Thirdly, regarding the ?double dipping? question. I may be wrong, but I do not think there are many graduate schools that will allow you to count credits taken in a master?s program toward the required number of course credits for a doctoral program. (You can sometimes get ?repeat credit? if you are doing a second master?s degree, and some of the coursework you did for your first master?s degree is relevant to the second degree.) One exception might be a 6-year PhD program that does not require a master?s degree for entrance, in which case master?s courses would likely count toward the required coursework. But there are very few of those programs still in existence. In my case, my doctoral program required me to have additional graduate credits outside the department in a cognate area. Since I had completed the necessary number of hours in a related area at another graduate institution, they allowed those hours to fulfill the requirement for my cognate. In general, however, once a master?s degree is completed, those hours cannot be used toward the course hours required in a doctoral program. (They can be used to satisfy the distribution requirements of a doctoral program, but that is another matter.) Again, in the end, these are all generalities. If you are seriously considering such a course of action, it would be in your best interests to investigate carefully the specific policies of the institution where you want to do your PhD, as well as the policies governing the particular program you want to enter. That would include verifying anything you read in the policies of the graduate school with the graduate student director in your chosen department at School B. The factors in your particular situation might warrant a more optimistic scenario than I?ve outlined above, but you would be wise to get that on paper before you make a transfer. If you want to read a range of policies at various schools, you can do a search on google using the words ?transferring graduate credit? (do not use the quotation marks in this case). You will come up with a number of pages from different institutions that outline their policies on this issue. |
Subject:
Re: University transfer credits - how it works in general?
From: thursdaylast23-ga on 23 May 2006 10:40 PDT |
I have reread your question several times again today, and have come to a different interpretation than I did yesterday. So it seems that you propose to transfer to School B, take courses for graduate credit there, and then transfer that credit back to School A in order to complete the requirements of your master?s program there? Is that correct? If so, some of what I have already said still applies to this scenario. You would need to make sure that School A will accept the number of credits you still need for completion as transfer credit from School B. You would also need to know if there are any specific conditions on that transfer of credit (courses have to be taken at a certain course number level; courses need to be taken in a specific area, etc.). If you are transferring from a different educational system and/or country, you would need to find out how credits taken at School B would translate back into the course/credit system used by School A. If you still have required courses to complete for your master's program, you would need to find out if there are courses at School B that School A will count as equivalents to the required courses at School A. Once you?ve determined this (which you may already have done), then that leaves your question as to whether the courses you took at School B to complete your master?s degree at School A will count toward your doctoral program at School B, right? The answer is a general "yes," but not in the sense that the credits will be counted twice. And again, the exact method of dealing with graduate credits will depend on the particular institution. I have done a little more research and found differing policies, and will give you some specific instances. For example, Kansas State University will apply master?s course credits to their doctoral course requirements: ?A maximum of 30 hours from a master's degree may be used on a doctoral degree, if the supervisory committee decides that the course work is relevant to the doctoral program.? (This, of course, would include any credit you had earned from their institution.) For more details, see the page below. http://www.k-state.edu/grad/guidelines/d-pos-tx.htm However, this is likely because many doctoral programs, in setting the required number of hours for a PhD, include in their calculation the average number of hours that are usually involved in completing the master?s degree first. As the grad school policies of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign states, ?a student who has a master's degree is considered to have completed the first stage of the doctoral program?? (see link below for complete policies). So, in effect, the credits taken for your master?s program are calculated into the final total, but only once. http://www.grad.uiuc.edu/gradhandbook/chapterIII/section02.asp However, the University of Alabama at Birmingham calculates the credit hours required for a doctoral program as hours beyond the completion of a master?s degree. (I would expect the total required hours to be 60+, not 90+.) UAB specifically states that ?previously earned graduate credit that HAS NOT [my emphasis] been applied toward another degree (either at UAB or elsewhere) is eligible for transfer into the student?s current degree program.? Applying this policy to your case, the credits you earned at School B and transferred back to School A to complete your master?s degree there would not count toward your doctoral program at School B. See the link below for the full policy. http://main.uab.edu/show.asp?durki=24174 So, in effect, the general answer to your question is that the courses taken for your master?s degree will, in some way, count toward the total required number of hours necessary to complete the coursework portion of the PhD degree, wherever you take them. But they will not be counted twice. Whether or not School B's formula allows credit for your master?s program or not, you are going to have to complete roughly the same number of hours of credit beyond the master?s degree to get the PhD. |
Subject:
Re: University transfer credits - how it works in general?
From: sonoritygenius-ga on 31 May 2006 10:56 PDT |
lmao thursday, you try toooo hard |
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