SATS / TESC / Excelsior

Hello,

Has anyone here taken any courses from the South African Theological Seminary (SATS) and had any success in transferring them to Excelsior or Thomas Edison State College (TESC)?

Thanks,

Michael Gates

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Hmm. SATS to one of the "big three." I could be wrong -- and, actually, I hope that I am so you can get some good news -- but I'll bet no one around here has ever tried that. We'll see, obviously.

I'll add this, though: There's no reason why it shouldn't work. SATS has the kind of government-approved accreditation that is typically respected by accredited colleges and universities in the U.S. One sure way to make absolutely sure (or to at least increase the chances to as close as possible to being sure) that SATS credits will transfer cleanly to U.S. accredited colleges and universities is to have said SATS credits evaluated by a credential evaluator that is respected by pretty much all of academia; and whose opinion of said credits, if it's that they're equivalent to U.S. accredited credits, will be taken by everyone pretty much at face value.

It wouldn't cost very much to get either AACRAO's credential evaluation service, or pretty much any NACES member agency to review your SATS coursework and declare it equivalent to U.S. regionally-accredited coursework. Thereafter, it would be a whole lot easier for any U.S. accredited college or university to accept said coursework in transfer.

In fact, most U.S. colleges and universities actually already work with one or another of the NACES member agencies or AACRAO... which brings me to my next suggestion: Contact Excelsior or TESC (or whichever college or university into which you would like to transfer your SATS credits) and ask them what credential evaluation service they use. It will almost certainly be one of the NACES member agencies or AACRAO (or both). By selecting the specific evaluator that the college or university prefers, you'll be guaranteed that said college or university will take said evaluator's opinion on its face.

HELPFUL PIECE-O-INFO: If you've not actually completed the SATS coursework yet, and you're pretty much just tryin' to figure out if you can take some SATS courses first and then finish-up at Excelsior or TESC, be aware that once you get outside the U.S., there may not always be a precise course-for-course match. What I mean is, a single foreign course may not be exactly the same as a three-semester-hour or a four-quarter-hour course. It may take two foreign courses, for example, to get 6 semester hours of credit... two hours from one course and four hours from another. So, for example, if you receive what a foreign school says is 12 hours of credit, it may translate into only 9 hours of U.S. accredited credit; or it could go the other way and be considered equivalent to 15 or 16 hours of U.S. accredited credit. Just be aware of the possibility... that's all I'm sayin'; and keep that -- and how it could potentially goof you up -- in mind as you're doing your calculations.

Hope that helps.