51. Getting Credit for Your Work

Many four-year institutions do not inform their admitted transfer students how their credits will transfer until these students are well into their first term at the senior institution.

—College Board’s Improving Student Transfer from Community Colleges to Four-Year Institutions

A few years ago, the daughter of a friend of mine decided pretty much on a whim that she wanted to transfer to New York University.

She was a first-semester junior at the University of San Francisco when she decided to apply to NYU. She was accepted, and during the holidays, she moved to Manhattan and, voilà, was an NYU undergrad.

She was excited about the move until she discovered that NYU wasn’t going to accept a significant number of her credits. After one semester in Manhattan, she transferred back to USF.