Transfer Credits from a Community College to a Four Year College

The Community College has come along way in the past decade. Students are seeing the benefits of taking their preliminary courses and prerequisites at Community Colleges as opposed to a four year institution. Community Colleges cost quite a bit less, and they tend to have some perks larger schools just do not have.

Community Colleges offer more extensive remediation classes. They have smaller classrooms. Plus their student service departments tend to be more accommodating. All if these things can be very attractive to traditional and non-traditional students. It saves them money, and it also gives a more user friendly college experience. While this is a great idea, there are a few things that you need to keep in mind.

If you are thinking about going this route, what is the accreditation of the Community College you want to attend? Does the four year institution you want to attend have that same accreditation? If does not, the four year institution accept the Community College’s accreditation? If the schools do not have the same accreditation, or if the four year school does not accept the Community College’s accreditation, they will not accept your transfer credit. That will be a waste of your money and time. Sure, you can try to test out via CLEP, but those will cost you more money too.

Once you have determined that the two schools are compatible, you can determine if the schools have a transfer agreement. Just because the school takes your credits, does not guarantee that their classes and the Community College classes will match up. Some four year institutions have standing agreements with certain Community colleges. They have agreements that state exactly which of the Community College classes will transfer over to their system. These agreements ensure that as long as you meet the transfer requirements (usually a C or higher) those classes will count as their counterpart at the other school.