I’m from London and just started at Northeastern, but I’m going to be back home for Summer. I was looking at the LSE summer school and I really wanna take a couple of courses there. Northeastern offers a study abroad option for the summer school but there’s no way I’m going to pay Northeastern’s ridiculous $11,000 for two classes when I can pay around £3000 directly to LSE for the same thing. Therefore I was wondering if I could potentially cut Northeastern out of the equation, but still receive the transfer credit.
I can’t see how technically it would be breaking any rules given that Northeastern’s transfer credit guideline says that one can take classes outside of NEU if the course is not offered at Northeastern (of which many of the LSE courses are not). Not sure how Northeastern can justify trying to stop me from taking an independent summer school which they evidently offer credit for, just to squeeze some more cash out of me.
The transfer credits are all on the GEO Course Equivalency Database, but I don’t think they’re on the general transfer credit database. Not sure what this means about the ability/ease to transfer credits
As a related question, can I only take one of the general ‘elective’ courses per subject - for example the general POLS 3990 elective that is given for any 3000 level course that’s not offered at Northeastern?
Cheers for any responses, I actually emailed my advisor as well with all these questions but he’s bloody useless and his reply rate is pathetic.
They cannot stop you from taking courses elsewhere but they can refuse to accept the credits. You will need to get approval in advance. Why did you enroll in an American university if you are shy about the costs that you knew of in advance?
I’m not “shy about the cost” of American university overall I’d just rather lessen the financial impact on my family if I can - what’s wrong with that? Why would I pay $11,000 for something with a list price of £3000?
Once enrolled you will need an extremely good reason for transferring credits taken outside the university. They will likely know the real reason for your request.
If you have a merit scholarship from Northeastern that can be applied to the summer Dialogues.
@versaysea Its an interesting question and an excellent point. If you don’t hear back from your advisor - why don’t you stop into the registrars office or the study abroad office and ask? You will have a much better chance of getting a response face-to-face than over email. I know its hard for email-centric college students to understand that, but truly, your best bet is either to stop in or call and speak to someone directly. Please post back if you get an answer.
I’m guessing that even American students take courses at their community college and transfer in. I bet there is a limit… This is just a guess though.
If you are a full time student paying 45k in tuition most schools are not going to let you transfer cc (or most any other)courses in for credit which would obviously reduce the overall credits needed and the annual 45k the university receives.
As Tomsr stated “you will need a very good reason”, maybe something needed and not offered at your home university.
@suzyQ7 cheers, yeah I think I’ll pop in on Tuesday, I want to meet my advisor one on one about it but he is about as helpful as a spoon, maybe the study abroad office will be more responsive.
As for Northeastern - generally loving it, although I find the weekends are a bit dull when you cannot go to the pub and the fraternities are less than receptive to non-Greek males coming to their parties. Classes so far have been pretty easy apart from Comparative Politics - we shall see what the midterms hold…
@s3 they’re offering courses centred on British politics, which is what I want to go into after graduation, therefore it is something not offered at Northeastern. On the transfer credit database it confirms that some of the LSE courses are not equivalent to anything offered at Northeastern as they are shown simply as POLS 3990 (elective) etc.
@versaysea Sounds like you have a good reason (courses not offered here). Hopefully Study Abroad will give you answers and you’ll be able to pay the local sticker price instead of the inflated US College sticker price for the same courses. Please let us know how it goes.
@suzyQ7 you can, I wouldn’t want to be associated with some of the characters though, also don’t fancy paying $500 a semester for the privilege of being invited to parties.
Thank you for your advice, at least there are some helpful people on here
It is possible you have created a problem where none exists, depending on how restrictive NEU is with accepting credits from schools like LSE. When I was an undergrad (granted many years ago at a different school), as long as the school you normally attended was convinced that the course you were taking elsewhere was comparable in quality to the ones offered at their school, they would take the credit. Same idea for courses not offered at NEU, if they were convinced the content and quality met their standards. Seems like that would be no problem for LSE. It might require obtaining a sufficient course description so that the department that would theoretically offer such a course, be it Econ, Philosophy, Math, whatever has a chance to review it and tell the school that it is acceptable for credit transfer.
But it never would have occurred to me to even go the route of study abroad programs to make this fit in. It seems more like a straightforward summer school credit issue, which happens routinely. Many students take summer courses at schools near their homes for various reasons, such as catching up if they had changed majors after a year or two. Perhaps the aspect of it being at a foreign university plays a role, but again I would think schools like LSE, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. would already be on an approved list. Generally speaking, the grades do not count in the GPA. They just show up as passing the course.
Northeastern, unlike other colleges, has a very strict policy about not accepting credits once you are enrolled. So, students at NEU cannot take community college classes over the summer and get credit. SInce this is study abroad their policy may be different - you won’t know until you speak with a study abroad advisor.
My oldest D had difficulty getting approval for accepting credits at her U also (Not NEU), so it isn/t that uncommon. She was able to petition pretty far up the “food chain” so to say and finally got the approval, so I would recommend not giving up quickly.