Some schools seem to differ in how they assign credits. For example, I know many semester-based schools give 3 credits for most courses, and 4 credits for courses with a lab. I've seem some community colleges on a quarter-system, which give 5 credits for most courses and 4+1 for courses with a lab. Then, I've seen some colleges giving 4.5 credits for most courses. The quarter-system schools seem to fit in more lessons each week, but have fewer weeks. Is there a standardized system for calculating the conversion of credits during a transfer? Or is that entirely up to the receiving-the-transfer institution? Have you seen any common conversion rate?
Most of the school I see that always make 1.5 quarters equal to 1 semester. I always avoid quarter based school. However, I finally fall into one..Capella University. Each courses require lot of works for 10 weeks, but only 4 quarters...that is not even 3 semesters course.
I can confirm both of the above posts as I have gone back and forth between the two systems quite a bit. Washington State schools, with the exception of WSU use the quarter system. ACE has established the conversion rate based on contact hours: Quarter hours to semester hours: SH = 2/3 QH (example: 3 QH class would be 2 SH) Semester hours to quarter hours: QH = 1.5 x SH. (example: 3 SH class would be 4.5 QH) As Tekman mentioned, it is best to avoid cross-pollinating if at all possible because you will invariably end up either losing credits or having to take additional classes going in either direction.
I did 53 credits on Quarters and transferred them into semester. All my classes in Qh were 4.5 quarters and they transferred over as 3.015 semester credits at Ottawa University. I remember them saying something about .67 or something close to that for how they figured it but honestly I can't remember their policy! I have also read about taking your semester credit hours and then dividing it by 1.5 to give you semester hours.
