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External Credit

Transfer Credit from Another Institution

  • Notwithstanding any of the provision specified below, students wishing to graduate with a major in history must take a minimum of six (6) history courses (18 hours) at Rice. This means that transfer credit (foreign or domestic) when combined with advanced placement credit cannot count for more than four courses (12 hours) of the ten courses (30 hours) required for a major.

  • In order to grant transfer credit, the History department requires that the course taken at another institution be the equivalent in required reading, writing, and testing of a Rice History course. The course taken elsewhere does not have to have an equivalent in the Rice History Department offerings.

  • Summer school courses, although not necessarily ineligible, often fall below Rice Standards.

All information must be presented with the Transfer Credit Information Sheet (TCIS), which may be downloaded here. Copies are also available from the History department office.  Before submitting your TCIS, be sure to keep a copy for your records.

I. Courses Already Taken At Another Institution

  • We do not give credit for courses taken at two-year junior institutions, the European Baccalaureate, or for courses taken during the final year of Canadian high school. If you feel that your junior college course is the equivalent of a Rice course and want to appeal, you must provide a syllabus, which includes reading assignments, number of written pages, and method of testing. This supporting material must be presented with a completed Transfer Credit Information Sheet.  See below for instructions on completing and submitting your TCIS and other supporting material.

  • To receive history department credit for a course completed at any other institution, you must complete the Transfer Credit Information Sheet (available here). The transfer Credit Information Sheet is an electronic form that you can fill out on your computer (using Adobe Reader, Preview, or some other PDF document viewer).

  • Please return the completed TCIS form via email to the director of undergraduate studies.  To ensure the promptest attention, please type the following in the subject line of your email: “First Name Last Name: Credit Request” (for example, “John Smith: Credit Request”).

  • Along with the TCIS, you must also submit any required supporting material: course syllabus, official transcript, and, if necessary, the work completed in the course.  You should submit this supporting material to the history department secretary, Rachel Zepeda, in Humanities 326.  Alternatively, if you have the material in electronic form you may submit it to the director of undergraduate studies, via email, when you submit your TCIS.

  • The director of undergraduate studies will evaluate your transfer request and send you a reply within two weeks of your submitting all of the required materials. In deciding whether to award history department credit, the main issue is not whether there is a precisely equivalent course in our department, but whether the amount of work involved in the course is equivalent to what would be required at Rice.

II. Courses Not Yet Taken

  • If you wish to take a course at another institution during the summer, while studying abroad, or at some other time, you must demonstrate that the course is the equivalent in amount of work (not topic) of a Rice History Department course. This may be difficult because many programs, especially study abroad programs, often do not provide such information in advance. In such circumstances, “preliminary approval” may be granted, but it will be up to the student to demonstrate upon return to Rice that the courses taken are equivalent to Rice History courses in amount of work required. Please note: Preliminary approval does not guarantee final approval. The History Department reserves the right to make final decisions about granting credit.

III. Distribution Credit

  • Making decisions about distribution credit is the responsibility of the Registrar’s Office, which requires that any course for which distribution credit is given must be the precise equivalent of a Rice course that has distribution status.  In considering applications for transfer credit, the director of undergraduate studies will determine whether the course in question is the precise equivalent of a Rice history department course.  If the director of undergraduate studies determines that the transfer course is the precise equivalent of a course that counts as a university distribution course, it will be noted on the TCIS for the information of the Registrar’s  office.

Advanced Placement (AP)

  • Of the ten courses (30 hours) required for a history major, no more than two (6 hours) will be satisfied by Advanced Placement credit. AP credit may not be used to satisfy departmental distribution requirements for the history major. “AP courses can satisfy University distribution requirements, however, as long as the course in question is on the Department’s distribution list posted on the Registrar’s website. For example, AP HIST 117 can count as D-2 distribution course.” See also the limit discussed under Transfer Credit.