International Transfer Advise

For this blog entry I would like to write about some of the challenges that transfer students and especially international students might face when they come to a University in the United States. Since I am an international student myself I had to face some challenges so far and I would like to share some information and advice with everybody, hoping that they are beneficial for some of you.

I am studying in the United States since the Fall of 2008. After having applied for my undergraduate degree I was told from the beginning that I would be able to receive transfer credits for previous course work, however I never imagined it being such a long and tiring process. In my case I only had an equivalent of an American high school degree, except the fact that my degree was one year longer than the typical American high school degree. Therefore I was told to receive credit for this additional year. In order to be able to receive credit for anything it is of importance to have course syllabi, course description and anything other detail like books, or letters from previous professors that might help to give somebody else an idea of what you have covered in previous classes. This goes not only for classes of a high school degree, but moreover classes from international bachelor degrees. Due to the fact that some international bachelor degrees are only 3 years in duration than the 4 year bachelor degrees in the U.S., it is highly beneficial to try to get each much transfer credits, not only to save time but also money, which if you are paying international tuition fees can be quite a lot.

As mentioned before, keep all your records from previous classes, or some times professors even let you write your own course description if you are not able to get them from your previous institution. If you do that, be precise and list for how many hours you had this class, what topics you covered and how exams looks like, the more information the better! Once you have gathered all your documents be sure to know who in your institution is doing the evaluation of these classes. In most cases you start with the international office at your school (this is the link to IUPUI's international office http://international.iupui.edu/ ) Most often though since they are not experts in these classes that you have taken in different areas, they or you will transfer your materials to the department that can actually award you credit for it. Be aware that sometimes this can take a very long time and often professors in the department are busy and it is not their priority to review course syllabi from other countries and evaluate them. Therefore, I would make sure to ask people in the department to find out prior who is in charge of evaluation and who has done it before. Further, it is also great to schedule an appointment with the professor to be able to talk to them in person, explain your personal situation to them and also give them some detail about the classes. In my experience this always worked well and it seems that they were more willing to work on this for you than if you were just a random student sending them an email with lots of documents.

Once you know who is in charge of evaluating always make sure to stay in contact with them and touch base with them if you don't see any changes made to your record. It is always good to contact them after some weeks have passed by just to send them a little reminder so they are not forgetting about you.

In order to know if you have received credit for your classes you would see the classes added to your academic record. Usually the professor submits their request to the registar office, who is putting it on your record. Sometimes it can happen that they charge you a posting fee, which is can vary but is around $20 per credit hour, considering international fees that is only a fraction but since you already completed the class in your home country, the professor sometimes can indicate that they should not charge you for any posting fees.

In case you are not ending up the credit that you feel that you deserve and that you have worked for there is another way of demonstrating proficiency in areas, by taking a CLEP or Dantes exams, which is a test that lets you test out of basic introductory college classes (such as math, biology, sociology, psychology and English just to name a few). For more information there is a link to the website http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/clep/about.html and it is always good to check back with the department to make sure that they are excepting credit coming from tests like that. But to my knowledge they do, since those tests can be taken by anybody. Furthermore, those exams usually cost $120, which again to international tuition are very cheap and can definitely save you a lot of time. Another way to receive credit is, by using your advantage of another language. I was able to take a German class, and after the successful completion of this class I was able to receive 6 additional credits for advanced placement credit.

In my case, I was able to finish my Bachelor degree in less than 3 years, and I was able to overall receive probably receive 2 semesters worth of credit. It is definitely worth a try and even though it can be time consuming and frustrating at times, the reward can definitely be worth the effort!

Katrin  Moesler
Peer Advisor