I got an email recently from a dad named George who shared the bad luck of a young woman who lost lots of college credits when she transferred from one four-year university to another.  His email is pertinent because many students end up hopping from one school to another.  In fact, I believe about one out of four students fall into this category

A Reader’s Question

Here is George’s email:

Our college-age daughter had a friend over for dinner tonight.  She transferred from UNC Chapel Hill to Georgia Tech after this past spring semester ended. She was telling us that she lost a lot of her credits that she had earned at UNC.  This seemed odd to me — UNC and GT are both very good schools, so why would GT not accept credits from UNC?

I vaguely remember that this is a fairly common issue – schools not accepting a high percentage of credits earned at the school being transferred from. Can you educate your followers on this subject?

Avoiding the Transfer Nightmare

I can relate to what happened to this college student because the same credit debacle happened to a family friend’s daughter. In what seemed to be a spur-of-the moment decision, the girl decided to transfer from the University of San Francisco to New York University. It was only after she got to NYU that she discovered that lots of her credits did not make the transcontinental trip. She spent one expensive semester at NYU and then transferred back to USF.

To find out how students can preserve their hard-earned college credits when they transfer, I called Deborah Shames, an independent college counselor in New Jersey and the transfer admission adviser for the Kaplan Leadership Program. She understands transfer issues better than anybody I know. Here is the advice she shared:

1. If you are contemplating moving to another school, contact the transfer admission staffer at that institution and ask for a preliminary college credit evaluation. This evaluation should give you a heads up on what credits the school will accept. Keep in mind, however, that some schools won’t provide an evaluation until you’ve applied to their institutions.

2. Be prepared to lose some credits. That routinely happens, but you should be able to find schools where the loss will be minimal.

3. To keep your credits from disappearing, it’s best to take introductory classes before trying to transfer. Courses that typically fall into that category would include Calculus I, Intro to Psychology and freshmen writing seminars.

4. Some schools will not accept any credits that are in the student’s major or they may only take credits in the major if the student earned “A’s” or “B’s.”

Bottom Line: 

Carefully research your options before transferring to another four-year college. Preserving your credits should be a top priority or you could easily end up requiring five or six years to earn a bachelor’s degree.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes college blogs for CBSMoneyWatch and US News & World Report. Follow her on Twitter.

More at The College Solution:

Good News for College Transfer Students

College Textbooks: 7 Ways to Save Money

The Fascinating Anatomy of a College Scholarship

Most of the attention during every admission season is on high school seniors, which means transfer students often get lost in the shuffle. That’s a shame since a sizable number of college students end up transferring every year.

According to special transfer student report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, a third of students end up transferring to other colleges or universities. Some of these students are transferring from community colleges, but many are also seeking to move from one four-year school to another.

If you or your child is hoping to transfer, here are 8 things you need to know:

1. The transfer admission hurdle is slightly more difficult. The acceptance rate for transfer students (64 percent), according to NACAC, is slightly lower than the acceptance rate of first-year students (69 percent).

When evaluating transfer applicants, the biggest admission factor by far is a student’s grades at their current college. More than 90 percent of colleges that participated in the NACAC survey said the overall postsecondary grade point average was “considerably important.”

2. Transfer students can qualify for merit aid. Seventy-seven percent of colleges reported that they provide merit scholarships to transfer students. Eighty-one percent of small colleges, which have less than 3,000 students, report that they award merit scholarships to transfer students. In comparison, 66 percent of medium-sized schools and 67 percent of large schools offer merit awards.

3. Not all schools have room for transfer students. Small colleges, which have very few undergrads leaving, can have few available spots for transfer students. For instance, Amherst College admitted just 24 transfer students out of 421 applicants for the fall term. Georgetown University, a much larger institution, admitted 364 transfer students out of 1,616 who applied.

State universities are often more equipped to accept large numbers of transfer applicants. UCLA, for instance, recently accepted 5,505 transfer students out of a pool of 18,986 transfer applicants.

4. Standardized tests scores aren’t as important. The SAT and ACT, according to the NACAC survey, are less important for transfer students than high school seniors.

In fact, the more time you’ve spent in college, the less other institutions care about your SAT or ACT scores, according to Deborah Shames, an independent college counselor in northern New Jersey and a transfer admissions advisor for Kaplan Education Foundation.

“If a student is transferring after one semester in college or a year, schools usually want the SAT and high school GPA, but the further away from high school, the less schools rely on them,” Shames says.

5. Check out what a college wants from transfer students. Before applying to a school, find out what the institution is looking for in transfer applicants. You can get a good idea by looking at a school’s Common Data Set. The Common Data Set is a document that four-year schools across the country complete that contains lots of information on such topics as admission criteria, freshman academic profile, campus safety and transfer admissions. You can often find a college’s Common Data Set by Googling that term and the name of the institution.

The College Board also provides this same transfer information. When looking at the profile of any four-year school on College Board, click on “Admission” hyperlink and you’ll find the transfer statistics.

6. Make sure your credits transfer. You don’t want to lose credits when you move to another school. During the admission process, talk to a college’s transfer credit evaluator to get a sense of what credits would transfer.

7. Look for transfer-friendly schools. One way to access that intangible is to ask if the college has a transfer coordinator. Also does the school have a transfer orientation or other transfer programs? Does the school have housing for transfer students? Ideally, you’d like to talk to transfer students about their experience at a school.

8. Focus on the positive when explaining your desire to transfer. College applications will typically ask a student why they want to transfer. Shames warns that students should avoid saving anything negative about their current school. Instead focus on positive reasons for the change and offer specifics on why you want to transfer to a specific college.

While it might not look like it, the college admission landscape is constantly changing.

This month The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a fascinating article about admission trends at colleges across the country. I’m going to share the article with you and also highlight the trends that the Chronicle reporter uncovered:

State universities continue to struggle.

State budget cuts are crippling public universities across the country. To help make up for the shortfall, many state schools are recruiting out-of-state students because they can charge a much higher tuition. In my own state of California, for instance, the cost of a nonresident attending UC Berkeley or UCLA is around $50,000!  With anemic state support, public universities are also raising tuition for their own residents to keep the lights on.

Transfer students are becoming a higher priority with 4-year universities.

This is good news for all the students who start out at a community college. It’s also encouraging for students who hate their four-year schools and would like to start over somewhere else.

Summer melt is a growing problem.

Families are only supposed to put a deposit down on one college. But as students apply to more schools, more are double or triple depositing. This can create havoc at small private schools that are counting on a certain number of freshmen, but see those numbers melt during the summer.

Admission offices are scaling back.

It’s ironic that many schools are receiving  more applications at the same time that they are cutting back on staff. Colleges are cutting back on printed materials they sent prospects, as well as travel time for admission reps. The article didn’t say so, but more schools are reaching out to teenagers virtually through such websites as Zinch and Cappex, as well as College Week Live.

When recruiting internationally, colleges are casting a wider net.

There is such a crush of Chinese students applying to Americans universities and colleges that you could fill entire classes with them. While it’s been easy to recruit Chinese students, colleges are now focused on greater international diversity.

If you’re curious, here is The Chronicle article on college admission trends:

Admission Deans Feel Crunched by the Numbers

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller and a workbook, Shrinking the Cost of College: 152 Ways to Cut the Cost of a Bachelor’s Degree. Follow her on Twitter.

University of Missouri image (my alma mater) by ensign_beedrill. CC 2.0.

According to special transfer student report from the National Association for College Admission Counseling, a third of students end up transferring to other colleges or universities. Some of these students are transferring from community colleges, but many are also seeking to move from one four-year school to another.

If you or your child is hoping to transfer, here are 8 things you need to know:

1. The transfer admission hurdle is slightly more difficult. The acceptance rate for transfer students (64 percent), according to NACAC, is slightly lower than the acceptance rate of first-year students (69 percent).

When evaluating transfer applicants, the biggest admission factor by far is a student’s grades at their current college. More than 90 percent of colleges that participated in the NACAC survey said the overall postsecondary grade point average was “considerably important.”

2. Transfer students can qualify for merit aid. Seventy-seven percent of colleges reported that they provide merit scholarships to transfer students. Eighty-one percent of small colleges, which have less than 3,000 students, report that they award merit scholarships to transfer students. In comparison, 66 percent of medium-sized schools and 67 percent of large schools offer merit awards.

3. Not all schools have room for transfer students. Small colleges, which have very few undergrads leaving, can have few available spots for transfer students. For instance, Amherst College admitted just 23 transfer students out of 412 applicants for the fall term. Georgetown University, a much larger institution, admitted 284 transfer students out of 2,028 who applied.

State universities are often more equipped to accept large numbers of transfer applicants. UCLA, for instance, recently accepted 5,261 transfer students out of a pool of 16,587 transfer applicants.

4. Standardized tests scores aren’t as important. The SAT and ACT, according to the NACAC survey, are less important for transfer students than high school seniors.

In fact, the more time you’ve spent in college, the less other institutions care about your SAT or ACT scores, according to Deborah Shames, an independent college counselor in northern New Jersey and a transfer admissions advisor for Kaplan Education Foundation.

“If a student is transferring after one semester in college or a year, schools usually want the SAT and high school GPA, but the further away from high school, the less schools rely on them,” Shames says.

5. Check out what a college wants from transfer students. Before applying to a school, find out what the institution is looking for in transfer applicants. You can get a good idea by looking at a school’s Common Data Set. The Common Data Set is a document that four-year schools across the country complete that contains lots of information on such topics as admission criteria, freshman academic profile, campus safety and transfer admissions. You can often find a college’s Common Data Set by Googling that term and the name of the institution.

The College Board also provides this same transfer information. When looking at the profile of any four-year school on College Board, click on “Admission” hyperlink and you’ll find the transfer statistics.

6. Make sure your credits transfer. You don’t want to lose credits when you move to another school. During the admission process, talk to a college’s transfer credit evaluator to get a sense of what credits would transfer.

7. Look for transfer-friendly schools. One way to access that intangible is to ask if the college has a transfer coordinator. Also does the school have a transfer orientation or other transfer programs? Does the school have housing for transfer students? Ideally, you’d like to talk to transfer students about their experience at a school.

8. Focus on the positive when explaining your desire to transfer. College applications will typically ask a student why they want to transfer. Shames warns that students should avoid saving anything negative about their current school. Instead focus on positive reasons for the change and offer specifics on why you want to transfer to a specific college.

Most of the schools with college vacancies have room for both incoming freshmen and transfer students. All but one school on the list still has financial aid available and 236 still have dorm space.

You can find the list of schools thanks to the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s annual college vacancy survey.

Seventy seven percent of the colleges with openings are private. Of the colleges and universities on the list, 226 have freshmen space available and 240 are still welcoming transfer students.

Here’s a sampling of the public universities that have college openings:

• Colorado State University
• Kennesaw State University
• Morehead State University
• Northern Michigan University
• University of Arizona
• University of Arkansas
• University of Florida
• University of Iowa
• University of North Dakota
• University of Vermont

Here’s a sampling of the private schools that have college vacancies:

• Bethany College
• Drew University
• Eckerd College
• Gustavus Adolphus College
• Lebanon Valley College
• University of San Francisco
• Lewis and Clark College
• Pace University
• The Citadel
• University of Puget Sound
• Willamette University

This list might be a lifesaver for teenagers who overreached and got denied at all the schools they applied to. It could also be helpful for students who are having second thoughts about their ultimate choice. I heard a story just the other day about a boy from California, who is regretting only applying to large universities. The family concluded that a small school would be better for this child. There are plenty of small colleges on this list.

The number of colleges with vacancies for transfer students is also good news because of this reality: About one out of five students at four-year colleges end up transferring to another school.   I think one reason for the large exodus is that students don’t spend enough time evaluating their college options!

Some schools will be wary of latecomers. Consequently, students should be prepared to provide a good explanation for their last-minute college search. And it’s the teenagers who must place the call to school.

Lynn O’Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes for CBSMoneyWatch. Follow her on Twitter.

Yes, there are ways to transfer to great schools — even Ivy League quality — from community colleges.

At the end of their post, I’ve included some of my own posts on transfer students…

Transferring Out of a Community College

Four-year colleges and universities are courting transfer students from community colleges. And they have transfer agreements or articulation agreements to make that move possible.

So what’s a transfer agreement?  Simply put, it’s a contract between partnering schools that allow qualified students to transfer course credits, but most transfer agreements do more than that. A transfer agreement can be a ticket to a four-year institution. Many transfer agreements tell students at a particular community college what they need to do to transfer over to a partnering four-year school. Here’s what many agreements include:

• The courses you must take before transferring
• The number of units you must complete to transfer
• The minimum GPA required
• Other specific requirements for certain majors

How can a transfer agreement help you? If you’re a community college student, provided that you’ve completed all the requirements under the agreement, you’ll be given priority consideration for admission to selected colleges and universities. In some cases, fulfilling a transfer agreement gets you guaranteed admission to a partnering four-year school. For example, the Virginia Community College System has transfer agreements guaranteeing admission to the University of Virginia’s College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Once you’re in, you can finish courses towards your bachelor’s degree and you’ll graduate with the same degree as everyone else at your university or college. The difference is that you had that first two years or so to explore your options while saving money by paying less tuition at a two-year college.

Transfer agreements differ among schools, so you will need to do a bit of research and talk to a transfer counselor at your college.

Lan Ngo and Chris Goodmacher write advice for prospective and current college transfer students at TheTransferBook.com.

More Reading from TheCollegeSolutionBlog:

Good News for College Transfer Students

Do Transfer Students Succeed in College?