External Credit FAQs
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SRFS Below Traversable
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Transfer credit - courses taken before matriculation at Penn for external transfer students only
Note: pre-college transfer credit is not permitted for regular admits -
Study abroad credit - courses taken at a Penn Abroad program
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Credit away - courses taken outside of a Penn-approved program after matriculation at Penn
| College of Arts & Science |
For departmental and program contacts, refer to the Contacts for Credit Evaluation page. For general questions, contact col-xcat@groups.sas.upenn.edu |
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| Penn LPS Online |
Contact advisor at: lpsonline@sas.upenn.edu |
| Engineering & Applied Sciences | Contact the SEAS registrar at (registrar@seas.upenn.edu) |
| Nursing | Contact undergraduate advising at advisor@nursing.upenn.edu |
| Wharton | Contact undergraduate advising at undergradinfo@wharton.upenn.edu |
Your home school academic advisor or school registrar will be able to direct you to the appropriate department.
If you are not able to locate an institution for your study abroad program, please contact Penn Abroad at goabroad@upenn.edu .
To request an institution be added for credit away or transfer credit requests, please work directly with your advisors and they will submit a ticket on your behalf.
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Study abroad course requests must be submitted and approved before the end of the course add period for the semester in which you are abroad.
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Transfer requests may be submitted as soon as you create a PennKey.
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Credit away requests must be submitted BEFORE the course is taken.
Course descriptions and syllabi help departments in the review and approval process. If you are not able to obtain a course description or syllabus, submit all the materials you have with your course request. You must upload some materials in order to submit a request. Keep in mind that some departments and divisions may not approve a course for credit without a course description or syllabus.
You must upload some documentation in order to submit a request. You could scan or take a clear photo of your syllabus and save it as pdf .doc .xls .ppt .jpg .gif .rtf or .txt . Remember that you can only upload documents no larger than 10MB. If you have trouble uploading your documents due to file size or other reason, please email the department contact directly along with your attachment and reference to this request and add a comment to that effect in the "Comments for reviewers" box on your course request.
If you are submitting a syllabus to a language department that deals with the language of your syllabus, you can leave it in the original language. For example, if your syllabus is in Spanish and you are submitting to the Hispanic Department, submit the syllabus in Spanish. You should, however, translate the syllabus and upload it if you are submitting to a department that is not equipped to translate the syllabus.
You may check the status of your course requests in XCAT by clicking "view my submitted requests" in the home menu. A status of "In department queue" means the course is awaiting action from a department and has not yet been approved. A status of "Department approved-division queue" means that a department has approved the course and the course is awaiting transcript verification from your Home School advising office. A status of "Division approved/Precedent approved, in registrar queue" means that the course is ready to be posted to your transcript and is awaiting action from the Registrar.
Courses must be approved by both a department and your Home School advising office before they appear on a Penn transcript. You should allow at least two weeks for a department or division to act on your request.
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If you are requesting transfer credit, your Home School advising office should have access to your transcript through the Office of Admissions.
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If you are requesting credit away, please have an official transcript sent from the external institution to your Home School advising office.
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If you are requesting study abroad credit, your Home School advising office will have access to your abroad transcript through Penn Abroad once they receive it. It can take 3-6 months before Penn Abroad receives the transcript. Study Abroad courses will not appear on the Penn transcript until a request for every course taken abroad has been submitted by the student in XCAT.
Often, a department will provide you with a note about why the course was denied and may also suggest an alternate department from which to request approval. You may also consult with your academic advisor about another department from which to request course approval.
Yes, though you will not receive more than one credit for a single course.
You may withdraw requests that have not yet been posted to the transcript by clicking “view my submitted requests” in the home menu. Find the request and click the “withdraw request” button.
It is very difficult to get credit for College general requirements while abroad. In order to do so, the abroad course has to be an exact equivalent of a general requirement course at Penn AND a Penn department has to approve the abroad course in XCAT giving it the exact same number as the course that fulfills the general requirement at Penn.
For additional information, visit the External Credit page at https://srfs.upenn.edu/student-records/external-credit .
