Questions about transferring schools

I am currently a freshmen at the university of iowa. I want to transfer after this semester however I see that many schools requite certain amount of credits. I currently have 24 credit from last semester and classes i took in high school. After this year I will have a total of 38. I was thinking about the university of Alabama and someone had asked about applying with less then the required credits and they were told they could apply they would just have to submit their high school gpa and test scores. Does this mean they are just applying as a freshmen instead of a transfer student? For example I was also considering applying to the university of Florida but they require 60 credit hours. Does this mean I can apply as a freshmen instead of transfer? If so would my credits transfer? thanks

I don’t know much about Alabama and Florida. Nevertheless, generally you apply as a freshman, if you have less than 15 college credits. If you have more than 15, then you can apply as a transfer student, and generally more credits mean high-school matters less. However, some schools like UVa require a minimum amount of credits. In this case 54 are required, but 60 are recommended.
The website of the school should explain these things in detail.

You need to ask each place about this. Most will consider you a transfer applicant if you have 30 college credits. Some will consider you a freshman applicant if you have fewer than 30 college credits. A few don’t accept transfers at all until the applicant has 60 credits. Whether credits for AP/IB/CLEP or other exams are included in those credit counts is a whole other story. So you have to ask.