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?

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.

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.

lmao thursday, you try toooo hard