Transfer Student Advising

Welcome to Bates!

This page serves as a landing site for important resources and policies for currently enrolled transfer students. We want your experience to be as meaningful as possible and are here to help with any questions you may have. Please also see the Bates Student Advising Portal for more general information regarding academic policies and supports.

For a PDF summary of the academic support and student support resources at Bates, click here.

For a PDF summary of the general education requirements and the members of a student’s advising team, click here.

A PDF of restricted major +1 declaration combinations.

Gen Ed Requirements

For Applicants

  1. Credit must be awarded from an official college or university transcript, from an official Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test score report, or from an official document considered equivalent to a transcript by the Registrar.
  2. Courses must be appropriate to a liberal arts and sciences college, comparable in quality to those offered at Bates, and students must achieve a grade of C or better.
  3. Courses taken in a college or university’s continuing education or extension program must be applicable toward the BA or BS degree being pursued by full-time undergraduate students at that institution.
  4. College courses taken prior to secondary-school graduation must have been taught on a college or university campus, have been graded in competition with college students, and not count towards the high school degree.
  5. Credit must be earned at a regionally accredited non-profit institution.
  6. Courses taught online may transfer, as long as they are pre-approved by the respective department/program.
  7. Courses must be worth at least three semester hours or five quarter hours or meet a minimum of 45 class meeting hours to be eligible for transfer. When appropriate, quarter hours may be added together and multiplied by 2/3 to determine the equivalent total number of semester hours to be used toward unspecified transfer credits.
  8. Students may receive credit for a maximum of two courses taken during summer school sessions.
  9. All credits must be transferred by the beginning of the final semester of the senior year.
  10. Credit for Short Term courses may not be transferred from another institution.
  11. Students may not transfer credit into Bates that are the result of simultaneous enrollment (i.e. being enrolled at Bates during a semester while also being enrolled in a course at another institution). However, students who have a compelling reason to do so may request permission in advance by petitioning the Academic Standing Committee. In order for such credit to transfer into Bates, approval must be given by the Academic Standing Committee in advance of enrolling in the course.
  12. Students must be enrolled at Bates for the final semester of their senior year.

To be eligible for financial aid, you need to indicate this need on your application for admission. More information is here.

See the Transfer Credit Policy. The Bates College Registrar will evaluate your record and decide how many credits you will enter Bates with and whether credits will be direct equivalents to Bates courses.

Yes! Though the caveat is that this depends on what year you are entering and the requirements of the program. Be sure to discuss plans major/program expectations with your academic advisor.

Upon acceptance into Bates, you will receive a letter from the Registrar that details the credits you will have transferred and your class year (graduation year). 

Generally, the First Year Seminar (FYS) is waived for transfer students. However, the FYS is also a W1 (writing 1) tagged class and you may or may not have that waived. You should refer to your letter from the registrar to gain clarity on what requirements you have remaining.

All transfer students are assigned automatically to an Associate Dean of Faculty as their academic advisor until they declare a major. Once you declare a major, you select a faculty member in that program or department as your academic advisor who will be with you until graduation.