Will My Credits Transfer: How to Check Before You Enroll

Admitted, then paid, then told. That is the published order at the University of Washington, and to its credit the university prints it rather than leaving you to discover it: the transfer credit policies page, read on 22 August 2026, places the course-by-course evaluation "after an admitted student pays the New Student Enrollment and Orientation Fee, and shortly before the student's Advising and Orientation session."

So the fee comes first. The number you needed in order to decide whether the fee was worth paying comes second.

That is not a Washington quirk. It is the ordinary sequence at most schools, and it is why the question in the title has to be answered by you, in advance, out of published documents, rather than by the registrar at the point where it would be most useful. What follows is the order those documents come in, the clauses that actually decide the number, and a federal rule change that is two days old and would move the answer to before the money — proposed, not in force. Every regulation and policy quoted here was read at its source on 22 August 2026.

The stakes are not theoretical. In the regulatory impact analysis of that new proposal the Department reports that 1.8 million Title IV students changed institutions between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 award years, and cites the Government Accountability Office's finding (GAO-17-574) that transfer students typically lose 43 percent of their credits.

Accreditation is the first gate, and the word "regional" is quietly becoming a liability

Almost every transfer policy opens with a sentence about accreditation, and that sentence disposes of more credit than every other clause combined.

The University of Miami's bulletin does it by naming names. It affirms seven institutional accrediting agencies — ACCJC, HLC, MSCHE, NECHE, NWCCU, SACSCOC and WSCUC — and states that acceptance of coursework "will be based on accreditation by these agencies." Washington does it by category, accepting credit from institutions "fully accredited by their regional accrediting association" and awarding none for work taken at a school that did not hold at least candidacy status at the time the coursework was taken.

Both sentences are ordinary. Both are also standing on ground that is moving. The Department of Education stopped recognising accreditors as "regional" when its 2019 rule took effect on 1 July 2020, and on 17 February 2026 it published a proposed interpretive rule (document 2026-03074, comments closed 19 March 2026) treating continued use of "regionally accredited" as a potential misrepresentation, on the ground that it "may send false signals to students and the public that an institution's accreditation is of a higher quality than institutions that are accredited by accrediting agencies that are nationally recognized." Footnote 1 of that document says the Department is concerned about institutions that "only accept credit transfer from 'regionally' accredited institutions to the detriment of their students" — and the page it cites as the example is the Washington one quoted above.

None of that helps you this month. What helps you this month is a fact you can establish in about four minutes: look up the school you attended in the Department's Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs, note the accrediting agency by name and the dates of its accreditation, and check that those dates cover the terms you actually studied. Candidacy status, a lapse, a change of accreditor mid-degree — each of those turns a clean transcript into an argument, and each is visible before you apply anywhere.

Four things your target school is already required to publish

You are not asking for a favour when you ask for the policy. The disclosure is compulsory. 34 CFR 668.43(a)(11) requires every school in the federal aid programmes to disclose a description of its transfer of credit policies including, at a minimum: any criteria it uses regarding credit earned at another institution and "any types of institutions or sources from which the institution will not accept credits"; a list of institutions it has an articulation agreement with; and written criteria used to evaluate and award credit for prior learning, including armed forces service and paid or unpaid employment.

The accreditor has to check that the page exists. 34 CFR 602.24(e) makes the agency confirm, at initial accreditation and at each renewal, that the institution's transfer of credit policies are publicly disclosed under 668.43(a)(11) and include a statement of the criteria the institution has established.

So it exists somewhere. Finding it is a search problem, not a permissions problem. The names it hides behind are predictable: "Transfer Credit Policies", "Transfer Credit Evaluation", "Credit from Other Institutions", or a numbered section of the academic catalogue. Search the site for the phrase "transfer of credit" rather than "transfer", which returns admissions marketing. If a school cannot produce the page on request, that refusal is itself information worth writing down.

Six clauses decide the number, and they are rarely on one page

The accreditation sentence gets you into the room. These decide the total. Every ceiling, floor and deadline below was read in the two catalogues on 22 August 2026; catalogues are reissued yearly, so check the edition date on the page you actually land on before you plan around a number.

A grade floor, stated to the plus and minus. Miami accepts only a course that received a letter grade, requires that a grade of C or higher was earned, and rules out anything at C-minus or lower. It also excludes any course taken pass/fail or satisfactory/unsatisfactory, which quietly deletes a whole pandemic-era semester for some students.

A recency limit. Miami requires transfer work to have been taken within 10 years of initial matriculation into its bachelor's programme, with a footnote allowing departments in disciplines that see frequent advances in research or knowledge to demand a newer course. Washington's published policy sets no age limit at all. Two respectable schools, opposite answers, same transcript.

A ceiling, and often two. Washington allows a maximum of 90 lower-division transfer credits toward a UW degree and a maximum of 135 total transfer credits toward the 180 the degree requires. Anything past the ceiling shows up on your record as earned but not allowed.

A residency requirement that eats the ceiling from the other end. Washington requires 45 of your final 60 credits in residence. Miami requires the final 45 credits at Miami, plus at least half the credit hours in the major and half in any minor. These are not transfer rules, which is exactly why people miss them, but they cap how much of a degree an incoming transcript can ever cover.

Level restrictions. Miami states that upper-division requirements at the 300 level and above "may not be satisfied with 2-year college courses." Washington awards no credit at all for courses considered below college level, usually numbered below 100, for courses offered for non-credit continuing education units, or for repeated courses and courses with duplicate subject content. Remedial work at the 100 level and above sits in a second tier on the same page — not refused outright but restricted, with at most 15 credits coming through as electives inside an academic associate degree from a Washington community college.

Unit arithmetic. If one school runs quarters and the other semesters, the number changes before anyone has judged the content. Washington converts quarter credits to semester credits by multiplying by 0.67 and semester to quarter by 1.5, so 30 semester credits arrive as 45 quarter credits. Do that conversion yourself before you compare a transcript total against a degree requirement, or you will be comparing two different units and drawing a confident wrong conclusion.

One more line is worth hunting for, because it decides whether a route you were counting on exists at all. Washington awards no credit for College-Level Examination Program exams. If part of the plan was to arrive carrying exam credit, read what your school actually accepts from CLEP and DSST before you pay a test fee, and treat military, certification and portfolio credit the same way — the criteria for those have to be published under the same regulation, and the mechanics differ enough that prior learning assessment runs on its own timetable.

Getting an evaluation in writing before the deposit clears

The gap between what you can read and what you can be told is narrower than it looks, and it closes in a particular order.

Start with the equivalency database, if there is one. Miami runs MATES, the Miami Academic Transfer Equivalency System, and states that a pre-approved course "will be accepted for credit subject to the transfer credit policy" — the school or college then decides how it applies toward the degree. Washington publishes an Equivalency Guide for coursework from Washington community and technical colleges. These databases are public, they predate your application, and they answer the course-by-course half of the question for nothing.

Then get the transcript itself moving, because it is the one item somebody else controls. A school may not withhold your official transcript over a balance created by its own error or misconduct in administering federal aid (34 CFR 668.14(b)(33)), and under paragraph (b)(34) it must, on request, provide an official transcript covering payment periods in which you received Title IV funds and for which all institutional charges were paid or included in an agreement to pay at the time you ask. That is narrower than "they have to give me my transcript." Read it as a description of exactly which terms you can compel, and settle anything outside it early rather than in the week the new school's deadline lands.

Then ask, in writing, for the thing the databases cannot give you: a pre-enrolment evaluation. The request that gets answered is specific. Name the sending institution and its accrediting agency. Attach an unofficial transcript, and course descriptions or syllabi for anything that is not obviously equivalent. Ask three questions — which courses transfer, which requirements they satisfy in the named major, and how many credits would be left to complete — and ask for the answer by email. Send it to the transfer credit evaluator or to the academic department, not to general admissions, because the department is who decides whether a course substitutes for a major requirement.

Expect some schools to decline, and treat a refusal as an answer of its own. It tells you the total you are being asked to commit to is an estimate. The deposit is not.

What a state guarantee carries, and where it stops

Some of this work has been done for you, in state policy, and inside its boundaries the guarantee is real.

Ohio is the clearest example. Ohio Transfer 36 guarantees transfer of a full set or a subset of general education requirements between Ohio public colleges and universities, with Transfer Assurance Guides alongside it for early major coursework and separate guides for career-technical, military and industry-recognised credentials. Washington's Direct Transfer Agreement works differently again: a qualifying DTA associate degree brings junior standing at the receiving school and clears lower-division general education, even though the university still moves credit course by course underneath.

The boundary is printed on Ohio's own page, and it is the sentence transfer students most often skip: completing an Ohio Transfer 36 course "does not guarantee that you will fulfill specific program requirements for your intended major." General education travels. Major preparation is negotiated separately, department by department, and a guarantee that moves 36 hours of general education can still leave a junior two years away from a degree in nursing or engineering.

Guarantees also stop at the state line, and moving to reach one carries a second price tag. If the plan involves crossing a border, the tuition rate becomes its own twelve-month problem — that sequence is in the in-state residency test and the documents that prove domicile, and the petition deadline in it usually falls before your first term ends.

The rule that would move all of this to before you pay

On 20 August 2026 the Department published a proposed rule on accreditation (document 2026-17001) that rewrites the transfer of credit provisions in both regulations quoted above. Comments close on 21 September 2026. None of it is in force, and proposals change between notice and final rule.

Read as a description of what is broken, though, it maps this article almost line for line. Proposed 602.24(e)(3) would prohibit denying transfer of credit "based on the institution at which the student completed the coursework or the agency that accredits that institution, so long as the agency is recognized by the Secretary." Proposed (e)(4) would create a presumption in favour of awarding undergraduate credit for coursework comparable in content and learning outcomes to the receiving school's own offerings, unless the school provides a written basis for denial. Proposed 668.43(c)(4) would require that rationale to be "specific to each course that does not result in transfer credit," and proposed 602.24(e)(5) would give you 15 calendar days from receipt of the written notification to appeal.

The timing provision is the one that reverses the sequence this article opened with. Proposed 668.43(a)(11)(i) would make schools publish the deadline for submitting a transcript "so that a prospective student can make an informed decision prior to making a nonrefundable financial commitment," and proposed 668.43(c)(3) would require a school that receives your transcript by that deadline to tell you what it will award, what it declines, and "the estimated time and, when applicable, courses that would be needed to replace" the refused ones — delivered, under (c)(5)(ii), by the earlier of the day you sign an enrolment agreement, complete registration, or make a nonrefundable financial commitment.

Until then the appeal you have is the one already sitting in the catalogue, usually unadvertised rather than absent. Washington names it on the same page: consult the admission specialist who completed the evaluation, then the UW Transfer Officer at the Admissions Office. Elsewhere it is called a course substitution, a waiver, or a petition to the department, and the evidence that moves it is identical in every version — the syllabus, the textbook, the contact hours and the learning outcomes, set beside the receiving school's own course description. That case is far easier to make in March than in your second year, when the course being argued over is a prerequisite you have already been made to sit through twice. And because the answer changes how many terms you are paying for, it changes cost of attendance and therefore the offer, so read the evaluation and your aid award letter as one document rather than two.