Background - Fulfilled all my requirements to get my associate’s degree at my local community college. I have completed 71 credit hours so far.
I have been talking with friends and family and have been told that most schools only accept between 60-70 credit hours from a two-year institution. My plan was to take electives that would give me credit towards a major at my transfer school and then transfer to that school in the fall. However, I do not want to waste my time and money if the classes I’m taking won’t even transfer. Would taking the semester off to work and save money for my future tuition make more sense to do? I will be talking to my counselor this week as well but I just wanted to get some opinions.
I’m not sure where your community college is and I don’t know where you’re transferring to, but here’s my advice since I just barely went through this all.
Most universities will only APPLY 60 to 70 semester credit hours towards your degree. I know in Texas, you can transfer in as many credits in as you want, but they’ll only apply 66 or 72 hours towards your degree. It happened for me that I was coming in with 90 credits from a community college, but my university only applied 62 hours towards my degree. They accepted those other credits, but they aren’t being applied to my degree because they’re not required. Say I can only have 66 hours applied to my degree… Well I can still transfer in 4 more hours from my community college, but obviously you want it to be relevant to your degree, otherwise it’s just wasted money.
You can work this semester if you take off. You’ll earn more money, but just be careful. If you’re relying on grants to help fund your education, if you have too much money, your grants might be cut, either to a smaller size or completely. If you’re only relying on scholarships, then this concern might not be so bad unless it’s a need based scholarship.
Hope you have fun doing whatever you decide to do!
If you know what university you hope to transfer to, I would contact that university for advice. For example, perhaps you took a statistics class, but it is not the right statistics class for your intended major. So then you would just be transferring a course that only counts as an elective.
Does your CC have a transfer advisor? Go meet with that person. You might want to pick up specific courses that would guarantee you admission at a place that has a formal articulation agreement with your CC, or courses that would be specific for your major.
Yes, only a certain number of credits will transfer (each receiving institution decides about that), but sometimes courses that you have taken that don’t transfer can still be used to fulfill a specific course requirement or to serve as a prerequisite for something else. In other words, you would still have to take the equivalent number of credits at the new institution, but you would have a bit more flexibility in your choice of coursework.