Transfer and Advanced Placement Credit

If you would like to apply for transfer credit, please contact the DUS at histdus@rice.edu, and set up an appointment to discuss.

Notwithstanding any of the provisions 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) 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, research, writing, testing, and classroom hours of a Rice History course. The course taken elsewhere does not have to have an equivalent in the Rice History Department offerings, UNLESS the student is requesting distribution credit. Students may not transfer courses taken pass/fail or on a similar basis at other institutions. Grade earned must be C- or the equivalent or better.
Summer school courses, although not necessarily ineligible, often fall below Rice Standards.

All information must be presented with the transfer credit form.

You must provide a syllabus, which includes reading assignments, number of written pages, method of testing and you may also be asked to provide work completed in the course in addition to the transfer credit form.
The director of undergraduate studies will evaluate your transfer request and send you a reply within two weeks upon receipt and approval of 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.

Please contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies to discuss potential courses beforehand.
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 for a course and if distribution credit may apply.

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 transfer credit form.)

The Department of History does not accept online courses for transfer credit

AP credit may not be used to satisfy 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. See also the limit discussed under Transfer Credit.