Pre-admission and transfer credit

Courses taken at any institution, including PSU, before the term of formal admission to a PSU graduate degree program are pre-admission credits. Courses taken at any other institution at any time are transfer credits. For all graduate certificate and degree programs, pre-admission and transfer credits must be graduate credit taken at a regionally accredited institution and applicable to a graduate degree program without qualification at the originating institution. Pre-admission and transfer credits cannot be correspondence credit.

A master’s student must earn a minimum of two-thirds of the credits applied to the degree after formal admission to the graduate degree program at PSU and must earn a minimum of two-thirds of the credits applied to the degree at PSU. Departments may have stricter limitations. Pre-admission and transfer credits for master’s degrees must meet all the following requirements: must be letter-graded B- or higher (pass or similar grading methods are not acceptable); must not be used for any other degree at any institution; must be no older than seven years old at the time the master’s degree is awarded; and must total no more than one third of the required credits for a master' degree program. For master’s degrees, pre-admission credits taken at PSU are requested via a DARS exception submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies. This request should be made soon after admission to the graduate program. Transfer courses from another regionally accredited institution are requested via the Proposed Transfer Credit form (GO-21M) submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies. It is strongly suggested that this form be submitted early in the student’s program. (The M.S.W. program has specific transfer credit allowances resulting from accreditation requirements and inter-institutional agreements, but a minimum of 42 credits applied to the M.S.W. must be taken at PSU.)

For graduate certificates, two-thirds of the required credits, or 15 credits, whichever is higher, must be taken at PSU. Individual programs may set higher minimums. Transfer credits for graduate certificates must be letter-graded B- or higher (pass or similar grading methods are not acceptable) and must be no older than seven years old at the time the graduate certificate is awarded. Transfer credits from other institutions must be approved by the graduate certificate program and the Office of Graduate Studies using a GO-11GC form (contact OGS for this form). Although pre-admission limits do not apply, reserved credit limits do apply. Students are encouraged to apply for and be admitted to graduate certificate programs as early as possible.

For doctoral degrees, pre-admission and transfer limits are at the discretion of the individual doctoral programs. Transfer credits are requested via the Proposed Transfer Credit form (GO-21D) submitted to OGS

Approved graduate transfer courses from other institutions are not entered on PSU transcripts and are not considered in the computation of PSU cumulative graduate GPA. However, transfer courses are included in the approved program of study for all graduate certificate and degree programs and are used to calculate the program GPA, which must be 3.0 or higher in order to graduate.

Pre-admission and transfer credits from international institutions are subject to the same requirements and limitations. Requests for international pre-admission and transfer credits must include additional documentation to facilitate verification of eligibility; contact the Office of Graduate Studies for details.