<p>Hi everyone.</p>
<p>I am seriously considering transfering, but there are some things that I find quite confusing. Being an international student makes it all the more perplexing. So I'd really appreciate if you guys with more experience and knowledge could help out with a couple of questions.</p>
<p>1) How does this credit thing really works? How do I know if I meet all the requirements and prerequisites? I mean the curricula and the subjects we have here seem to be so different from the ones in the US. Or is it not my concern and the respective school will value my current credits?</p>
<p>2) Is it possible to apply as a transfer student to a field rather unrelated to the previous one? How does this work?</p>
<p>3) Do transfer students ever enter as first-year students? I know that they mostly enter as sophomores, or juniors. </p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>1) Credits work differently at different schools, and each will have different policies evaluating courses taken at different schools. (When I applied to transfer from one US school to another, every school told me I had a different number of transfer credits in the school’s own units.) Some schools won’t accept transfers with “too many” credits. The admissions office of each school should be able to tell you its policies/ procedures for granting credit.</p>
<p>2) Maybe. Fields such as business, nursing, and engineering tend to have a set progression of courses that makes it hard to jump in mid stream. Some subjects, like languages, are hard to major in if you haven’t started them before college. On the other hand, in the US students don’t usually declare their major until the end of sophomore or beginning of junior year. There might be less of a leap from a history major to an English major, for example. If you want to change your major, your best bet is to apply to schools that don’t have (too many) required courses. If you let us know what country your college and high school are in, your current major, the major you want to study in the US, and the (types of) schools you are interested in, we might be able to give more specific details.</p>
<p>3) The fact that you are a transfer is chosen for you because you have had some college. Class standing is determined by the number of credits the college says you have. Some schools will “force” you to graduate once you have all the credits required for a degree, while others won’t.</p>