1. Policies and Procedures
  2. Transfer & Advance Placement Credit

Transfer & Advance Placement Credit

Responsible Office: Office of the Registrar

Overview

Credit is awarded only when official documentation (official transcript, official test score report) is submitted to the Registrar from the external institution.  Official transcripts not submitted as part of a student's application to Mount Holyoke may be submitted directly to:  

Office of the Registrar, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA  01075-1498.

Students must have active or readmitted status for new transfer work to be posted.

Post matriculation course work

Students planning to register for any course work post-matriculation should write to registrar@mtholyoke.edu before registering, to provide the title and course number and URL of course description as well as the institution's name and location. The Registrar's staff can then confirm, in writing, its potential for transfer. If the course is confirmed as transferable and the student hopes to apply the course to satisfy any requirement of a major, minor, certificate or nexus, the student should also seek pre-approval from the appropriate MHC department.

During their post-matriculation fall and spring semesters, students:

• may not earn transfer credit unless they are on an approved Leave of Absence.
• may not simultaneously enroll for credit at another institution while registered at Mount Holyoke.

Once posted, transfer course work will not be removed from the student's academic record.

Credit Limits

  • No more than 64 credits will be awarded to students for external work
    • whether taken pre- or post-matriculation, from eligible college-level courses, from Advance Placement work, from study abroad, summer or January study, study while on leaves, and/or work transferred from Mount Holyoke's Professional and Graduate Education program.
  • Within the 64 limit, no more than 32 credits will be granted for all advance placement work such as A-levels, the International Baccalaureate, the AP program of the College Board, etc.No more than 16 credits may be transferred from each semester of study abroad, academic leave, or non-academic leave including medical leave.
  • No more than 12 credits may be transferred from all of the summers and January intersessions between the student's matriculation at the College and graduation.  
    • Within this 12-credit allowance, the limit is a maximum of 8 credits per summer and 3 credits per January.
    • Students admitted as first-year Spring entrants may transfer as many as 8 additional summer school credits during their years at Mount Holyoke, provided the total of these additional credits and any transferred credits earned elsewhere in the Fall semester before their matriculation does not exceed 16. 
  • Please note that, regardless of the number of credits accepted in transfer, all students must meet the College's residency requirement. 
    • Those admitted as first-years for a fall semester will need to complete -- after their first two semesters at the College -- at least 4 more semesters at MHC including at least 64 more credits from MHC or the 5College interchange.
    • Those admitted as transfer or FP students must complete at least 4 semesters at MHC including at least 64 credits from MHC or the 5College Interchange.
    • Those admitted as first-years for the spring semester will need to complete -- after their first semester at the College -- at least 4 more semesters at MHC including at least 64 more credits from MHC or the 5College interchange.
    • Semesters of study abroad, academic leave or non-academic leave do not count as residency semesters.

Advance Placement Work

Within the maximum allowance of 32 credits for all advance placement work and as long as the student does not earn credit in the corresponding courses at Mount Holyoke, credit will be granted as follows: 

  • Advanced Placement program of the College Board: 4 credits per exam graded 4 or 5.
  • Caribbean Advanced Examinations: 8 credits per CAPE exam for liberal arts subject units with a score 1, 2, or 3. One non-liberal arts subject may be awarded 4 credits.
  • French Baccalaureate: 4 credits per eligible exam (score of 10 or higher and coefficient of 4 or higher), up to a maximum of 16 credits total.
  • General Certificate of Education (A-Levels):  A maximum of 32 credits if a student completes four or more exams with grades of C or better in liberal arts subjects. Credit is not awarded for O-Levels, AS-Levels, nor for the General Paper nor Knowledge & Inquiry nor Project Work.
  • German Abitur: A maximum of 16 credits for receipt of this degree.
  • International Baccalaureate:  Credit may only be granted for higher level exams awarded a grade of 6 or 7.
    • If the points total is below 36 or any grades are below a 6, the College may grant 8 credits per higher level exam graded 6 or 7.
    • If three higher levels and grades in all exams taken (including subsidiary) are 6 or 7 and 36 or more total points are earned, 32 credits may be granted.

Advance Placement credit cannot be applied to fulfill college requirements.

Credits & Grades

  • Transfer credits are generally granted on a semester credit-for-credit basis. That is, a 3-credit course taken on a typical semester schedule will often be awarded 3 credits at Mount Holyoke College.  
    • Note that, 3-credit UMass courses don't get upgraded to 4 credits in transfer.
  • Credits earned at schools not on the semester calendar will be converted to semester credits (e.g. a quarter credit will be awarded 0.66 semester credits at Mount Holyoke College). 
  • Credits earned in courses taught in condensed, intensive or alternative formats often transfer to Mount Holyoke at less than full credit-for-credit value.

Grades for transferred courses will not appear on the Mount Holyoke College transcript, nor will they affect the Mount Holyoke GPA.

Transferable Courses

Academic credit is generally granted for liberal arts courses completed with letter grades of C- or better. 

Academic credit is never granted for:

  • Internships
  • Courses with a pass/fail grade
  • Physical education courses
  • Courses taken at U.S. institutions without regional accreditation or international institutions without comparable Ministry of Education recognition
  • Courses not granted academic credit by the institution or which do not appear on their official transcript
  • CLEP or placement exams given by other institutions
  • Courses not at college level (such as college skills)
  • Math courses below Calculus 1 (such as pre-calculus, algebra, etc.)
  • Skills, craft or trade courses (such as EMT training, career exploration)

Academic credit is not usually granted for:

  • Independent study coursework
  • Computer science courses without written permission of the Mount Holyoke College computer science department
  • Music courses without written permission of the Mount Holyoke College music department; no credit will be awarded for performance studies, including individual instrument study, choir, orchestra, or other ensemble study

Academic credit for non-liberal arts courses is strictly limited:

  • The course(s) must meet all other transfer eligibility requirements.
  • For students who entered the College on or after September 2008, only one non-liberal arts course is initially transferred but the student may request transfer of additional course work up to a maximum of 12 credits; these students are limited to applying a total of 12 credits combined from Mount Holyoke curricular support courses and from any Mount Holyoke, Five College or transferred non-liberal arts courses to the 128 credit requirement for the degree.
  • For students who entered the College before September 2008, only one no-liberal arts course may be transferred; the student is then ineligible to count further non-liberal arts courses taken while at Mount Holyoke towards the 128 credits required for the degree.

Online courses are eligible to transfer,  as long as they meet all other conditions for transfer and the following eligibility restrictions:

  • Students whose first term at the College was Fall 2013 or later are eligible to transfer online courses taken before or after their matriculation at the College.
  • Students who entered the College before Fall 2013 are eligible to transfer online courses taken post-matriculation, but not any pre-matriculation coursework.

Please note that, while online language courses may qualify for transfer credit, they almost never qualify to satisfy Mount Holyoke's language requirement.

Transfer Credits from MHC’s Professional & Graduate Education Program (PaGE)

Courses taken outside of a degree program through Mount Holyoke's Professional and Graduate Education (PaGE) program are recorded on the College's Non-Matriculated transcript. If you are a Mount Holyoke student pursuing a degree and you wish to apply credits earned in PaGE courses to the transcript for your degree, you will need to request that they be considered for transfer towards the 128 credits required for graduation. You should submit your request to the Registrar's Office by sending an email to registrar@mtholyoke.edu after the course is completed and your final grade has been recorded.

Please note that all of the usual regulations and limits governing the transfer of credits to the Mount Holyoke undergraduate degree apply.

  • Some PaGE courses may not qualify for transfer at all. 
  • Occasionally, PaGE courses are not accepted for transfer at the same number of credits. 
  • All other transfer limits apply, including the 12-credit maximum, in total, from all summer work completed since the student began the undergraduate degree at the College and subsidiary limits of 8 credits per summer and 3 credits per January term.

After transfer, the transferred credits from PaGE will be presented in summary on the student's degree (undergraduate/graduate) Mount Holyoke transcript, just like any other transfer work.  The detail of courses taken through PaGE, such as the course titles and grades, remain on the Non-matriculated transcript. Therefore, students should expect to present both their degree and Non-Matriculated transcripts to graduate schools, employers, and others who want a detailed history of all courses taken and grades received. 

PaGE courses transferred to the degree transcript will not affect the undergraduate GPA.

The Registrar's Office determines the transferability of credits to the 128 required for the Bachelor of Arts degree. If you also want to apply those credits to fulfill a specific degree requirement (such as a distribution requirement, the Language requirement, or a requirement of the major or minor), you will also need to secure permission (approval) from the relevant academic department at Mount Holyoke to have the PaGE course accepted towards that requirement. If you're unsure from whom to seek approval, ask the Registrar's Office.

You are advised to get pre-approval from the Registrar's Office before taking any PaGE course, if you may want to transfer any credits earned in it towards the Undergraduate degree. Likewise, please secure permission from the appropriate academic department if you also may want the course to count towards/fulfill a particular degree/major/minor/certificate requirement.