<p>I'm currently in my first year of mathematics at Leiden University in the Netherlands and I have some questions concerning application for an American college.</p>
<p>First of all, on a lot of sites it says that if you are already enrolled in some college, you should apply as a transfer student. I'm not sure how to interpret the words 'college' and 'should'. Do they mean that if you want to continue your studies at another university and want to maintain the credit you earned so far, you should apply as a transfer, or is there some rule that makes it impossible for college students to apply as a freshman, even though they don't mind starting all over again? If the latter is true, does this rule apply to international students as well? That would be strange, because in Holland a college bachelor is so fundamentally different from one in America.</p>
<p>I have more questions, but they all depend on this one. </p>
<p>When you apply for admission to a college or university in the US you are obligated to provide official copies of your academic records from all previous and current university-level studies. Whether the number if courses you have completed (or will have complete before enrolling) makes you a Transfer Applicant is entirely up to the institution to which you apply. Each place sets it’s own policy. Whether any credits are accepted for transfer is also up to them.</p>
<p>So yes, you may be required to apply as a transfer, but receive no credit for previous coursework.</p>
<p>If you do not send your records when you apply, if this is ever discovered in the future, you may be expelled from the new university. If it is discovered after you complete your degree, your degree may be nullified. And yes, this does happen.</p>
<p>Thank you for your response. I was not planning on withholding any information, by the way. It seems I can only apply as a transfer to the colleges I considered and the admission rates are even lower than for freshman applications, so I’m going to make the best out of my education here in Holland. Thanks again.</p>
<p>The problem you have in this area is that the actual rules for internationals who may have some college work in foreign colleges vary among the US colleges and you cannot make any blanket conclusion that it is one way or the other. To give an example: for Columbia, whether you could apply as a freshman or transfer depends on whether the university you are in now is deemed a “US style” college which is one that has terms, such as semester or quarter, gives final grades in courses at end of each term, and your college can provide an in English transcript that shows courses taken and grades. If you are in a US style college, you can only apply as a transfer. If you are not in a US style college, you can apply only as a freshman but you cannot apply at all in that situation unless you do so in your first year at the foreign college for admission after that year which you could not possibly do now because the application deadline for freshman for starting in Fall 2013 was in January. </p>
<p>A different example is University of California campuses where you could not apply as a freshman and must instead apply as a trransfer as long as your college is in fact a college (i.e., as opposed to being part of high school) but you cannot request transfer unless at time of actual transfer (when you start classes at a UC) you will already have completed the equivalent at least 60 transferable semester credit hours (or 90 quarter hours).</p>
<p>In other words, to get your answer as an international requires checking the rules of each university you are considering. Just based on general knowledge, my best guess is that for majority you are likely to be considered a transfer and not a freshman applicant.</p>