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Some credits taken after receiving your baccalaureate degree may be transferred to your degree program at the University of Minnesota. Courses taken at another University, which were taken for graduate credit, taught by faculty authorized to teach graduate courses, can be petitioned to be approved for transfer. Credits must be appropriate to the degree you are pursuing and fulfill a requirement. Any credits that qualify to be transferred to your program will be approved at the time of the degree program submittal, usually in your second year for MS students, and after passing the WPE for PhD students. However, in order to make good decisions about the courses a student should be taking here, we have a process in place whereby students can get preliminary approval for transfer credits. We require a list of the courses that a student wishes to transfer. It should include the name of the course(s), credits, and a short description of the course including the book(s) used. If a copy of the syllabus is available, this should also be included. If a course is similar to one that is taught here, this should be indicated.
There is a limit of the number of credits that can be transferred to a MS program. The University requires that 60% of the MS coursework be taken at the University of Minnesota as an admitted, registered graduate student. Since 31 credits are required for an MS degree, no more that 12 credits can be transferred. There is another limitation in that a student may have no more than 8 semester credits in common between two MS degrees. If you already have an MS degree from another university, only 8 credits can be transferred.
Since the PhD degree is considered a research degree, there are no official limits to the number of credits transferred. A student should discuss with his/her advisor the courses that would be most appropriate to transfer.
Students may submit a petition to the Director of Graduate Studies by contacting the Graduate Student Services Coordinator, Georganne Tolaas ( tolaas [at] cs.umn.edu ) requesting preliminary approval of transfer of credits during their first semester. Final approval and official transfer will occur when the degree program is filed and approved by the Director of Graduate Studies and the Graduate School.
