Transfer of Credit

Transfers of Credit from other institutions

A student enrolled at St. Mary’s College may enroll in another institution and subsequently transfer the credits to St. Mary’s College. If a student does not secure written permission before taking courses at another institution, the College reserves the right to refuse to grant credit for such courses. The student should secure this prior written permission on a “Pre-Approval of Transfer Credit” form available online in the Portal, or the service counter of Glendening Hall. The Office of the Registrar will indicate on the form the transfer equivalency at St. Mary’s College. The student is responsible for filing the written permission with the registrar. This policy includes courses taken during the summer, while on leave of absence, or while concurrently enrolled as a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Transfer students who are admitted to the College will receive an official evaluation of their transfer credits after the College has received official transcripts for all college work attempted and the student has confirmed their acceptance with a paid deposit. Any course taken more than 10 years ago, although possibly acceptable as transfer credit, might not fulfill Core Curriculum or major requirements. The determination of which requirement(s) such a course fulfills shall be made by the chair of the department in which the course is normally offered.

Credit earned from other institutions is acceptable for transfer to St. Mary’s under the following conditions:

1. The institution must be accredited by the appropriate regional accrediting association.
2. The course must be approved by the College as being congruent with its liberal arts program.
3. A minimum grade of C- for courses taken at an out-of-state college or D for courses taken at a Maryland public college is required for transfer credit. A course in which credit has been earned but no letter grade given will be accepted for transfer only if the student was not allowed to take the course for a letter grade, or if the student can verify that the letter grade equivalent was C- or better.
4. Credits for technical (career) programs will be evaluated on a course-by-course basis.
5. Internship credit from other colleges does not transfer unless a student’s status is that of a current SMCM student and that student is participating for a semester or summer in an internship component of a study abroad program that has been pre-approved for transfer by the Registrar and Career Development Center.
6. The maximum number of credits that can be transferred from a two-year institution is 70 credit hours, and 90 credit hours from a four-year institution.
7. Credits that are transferred will be excluded from the computation of the grade-point average at St. Mary’s College. For further information, see “Computation of the Grade-point Average” in the section below.
8. The number of credits earned at the institution is the number of credits that will be transferred to St. Mary’s College.
9. At least half of the credits applied towards the student’s major must be completed at the College. For a minor, all 300-and 400-level courses must be completed at the College, and no more than half of courses applied towards the minor at the 100-and 200-level can be transferred to the College from another institution.
10. Students transferring with an AA or AS degree from a Maryland community college fulfill the Core Curriculum foreign language requirement as well as each of the six areas of the Core Curriculum Liberal Arts Approaches to Understanding the World requirement. However, these students will still be required to complete CORE 301 and CORE 350 (please see the Core Curriculum Requirements Section for the complete Core Curriculum requirements).
11. Students transferring from Maryland public colleges are entitled to the rights set forth in the Student Transfer Policies of the Maryland Higher Education Commission. St. Mary’s College complies with these policies. Consult the appendix for the full text of these policies. Regardless of the number of credits transferred, every student must conform to all degree requirements at St. Mary’s in order to obtain a degree.