Transfer Credit

Transfer Credit Overview

Transfer credit is defined as:

Accredited Institutions and Eligible Courses
Credit must be earned at an accredited college or university in the U.S. or the student's country of permanent residence. Refer to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation’s website for the list of six accepted accrediting bodies. Only courses from regionally accredited, degree-granting, post-secondary institutions are eligible. MOOCs and non-degree courses are not accepted.

Advanced Placement Credit

Eligible college credit earned in high school

Credit earned through the Ithaca College Exchange Program

Credits earned through the Office of Global Learning

CALS students may be approved to apply up to a maximum of 60 non-Cornell transfer credits toward their degree progress at Cornell. Of these 60 credits, only 15 may comprise credit earned in high school/prior to matriculating to college.

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Cornell University reserves the right to determine, in their sole discretion, whether course credit earned at other schools, either secondary or post-secondary, meets the College’s and the University’s academic standards and will be eligible to be applied toward Cornell degree requirements.

Neither applicants nor current students should assume that a particular course taken at another accredited institution will necessarily be eligible for Cornell credit even if it is listed as a recommended course or a foundational course.

Transferring Eligible Credit

For students transferring to Cornell from another institution, your official transcripts will be evaluated as part of the admissions process. Once admitted, these courses will be assessed and applied to your degree progress based on the College’s and the University’s academic standards. Only completed coursework listed on an official transcript can be evaluated. To have additional coursework considered for your degree progress before your first semester at Cornell, you must submit an updated official transcript.

For Transfer Applicants and newly admitted Transfer Students, official transcripts may be submitted electronically to: applicant [at] cornell.edu (applicant[at]cornell[dot]edu) . For any transfer credit earned after the first semester at Cornell, use the guidelines for Current CALS students.

Advanced Placement

Cornell University refers to pre-college examinations under the umbrella term Advanced placement. At Cornell, Advanced Placement includes College Board Advanced Placement Exams (AP), International Baccalaureate at Higher Level Exams (IB), General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (GCE- A-Level), and Cambridge Pre-University Exams. Please review the appropriate major department websites, and note that if you decide to take a course that your credit places you out of, you will forfeit that credit.

Submitting Advanced Placement/International Examination Scores

AP Exams

Arrange for the College Board to send your official score report directly to Cornell University using code 2098.
Current CALS juniors and seniors: Notify CALS Student Services after sending the score report to Cornell.
CALS Student Services will review your report and award appropriate credit based on your scores.
Students with more than 15 approved credits will be able to make adjustments to which are applied to their record after the add deadline has passed for their first semester at Cornell (September 9 for the class of 2029).

IB/GCE A-Level

Submit the original IB or GCE A-Level transcript to:

CALS Office of Student Services
140 Roberts Hall
Ithaca, NY 14850

How do you find out if Advanced Placement credit counts toward your requirements?

Visit the Advanced Placement Credit table for Cornell-wide policies
Review the table below, which summarizes English and Statistics exam credit and placement specific to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Visit the Biological Sciences website, which summarizes the policies surrounding advanced placement Biology credit.

My Advanced Placement credits have not yet been posted to my record.

Contact our office if you have had the official scores sent to the CALS Office of Student Services but do not see the test credits.

Exam	Subject	Score	Credit & Placement Information
CEEB’s AP Exams	English literature and composition OR English language and composition	5	Placement out of 3 credits of written expression. (Students allowed to use one test to fulfill written expression).
CEEB’s AP Exams	Statistics (excluding BE/EE)	5	4 credits. Students taking AEM 2100, BTRY 3010, BTRY 6010, PAM 2100, ILRST/STSCI 2100, ILRST 6100, PSYCH 2500, STSCI 2150, SOC 3010 or MATH 1710 or equivalent will forfeit credit. Major requirements are not included. Confirm credit with the department or faculty advisor.
International Baccalaureate (IB)	English Literature A (HL) OR English Language and Literature A (HL)	7	Placement out of 3 credits of written expression. (Students allowed to use one test to fulfill written expression).
GCE A-Level	English Literature	A*, A	Placement out of 3 credits of written expression. (Students allowed to use one test to fulfill written expression).
GCE A-Level	Statistics (excluding BE/EE)	A*, A, or B	4 credits. Students taking AEM 2100, BTRY 3010, BTRY 6010, PAM 2100, ILRST/STSCI 2100, ILRST 6100, PSYCH 2500, STSCI 2150, SOC 3010 or MATH 1710 or equivalent will forfeit credit. Major requirements are not included. Confirm credit with the department or faculty advisor.
Cambridge Pre-U Exam	English	D1, D2, D3	Placement out of 3 credits of written expression. (Students allowed to use one test to fulfill written expression).

*Note: CALS students are limited to 15 non-Cornell (transfer) credits (this includes all non-Cornell (transfer) credits earned before a student's first semester in a college/university) as a first-year student from an accredited college/university. For those receiving more than 15 credits of AP coursework, you must inform the CALS Office of Student Services which credits you wish to accept.

Transfer Credit Guidelines for Current CALS Students

Pre-Approved Transfer Credit

Current CALS students are welcome to take transfer courses during the summer or winter terms (or during fall or spring only if the student is on an official leave of absence) and request that those credits be applied to their Cornell record. Students can see transfer courses that have been pre-approved by CALS for general credit/to count for a CALS distribution requirement in the Transfer Database located in DUST.

The course must be taken for a letter grade of C or higher.

After the grade is final, order the official transcript to be submitted by the college (most often, the Parchment system is used) to cals-studentservices [at] cornell.edu (cals-studentservices[at]cornell[dot]edu). Transcripts provided by the student are not considered official and cannot be accepted.

Note that forbidden overlap policies and transfer credit limits will still impact whether a course can be applied to a student’s record.

Requesting Transfer Credit Pre-Approval

Current CALS students use the External Transfer Credit Application along with submission of a course syllabus to have a course pre-approved for any of the following purposes:

To seek CALS pre-approval of a course that is not already in the Transfer Database to count for credits/a CALS distribution

To document that the major has approved a transfer course to count for a major requirement

To notify CALS Student Services that a Cornell department has approved a transfer course for equivalency to a Cornell course

Note: This is only a required step if the student’s major requires Cornell course equivalency in order to count a transfer course for a major requirement. CALS Student Services cannot facilitate this process; the student must work with the appropriate department (i.e. if seeking approval for a course to come in as MATH 1120, work with the MATH department).