While the focus this time of year seems to be all about freshman admission, February is the time of year when we receive a majority of our transfer applications and our Evaluation Team begins to work on our transfer reviews, posting credit for work and helping students with any transfer issues. As such, here is some detailed information on the transfer process and the reasons for our deadlines, consideration levels and timelines.
Deadlines
Our most up to date deadlines for all of our applications can be found on our deadlines page, but here are some details about the transfer deadlines (for the Athens campus):
- Summer/Fall term transfer deadline – March 1 for both applying and for all materials to be submitted.
- Spring term transfer deadline – August 15 for both applying and for all materials to be submitted.
The deadlines, especially the Summer/Fall March 1 deadline, are set at that time so that UGA admissions can review the transfer files in a timely manner and get decisions out to applicants early enough for students to both make plans for the future and attend orientation. If we had an application or materials deadline in June, we would not be able to turn around decisions until close to the start of the fall term. As well, if we had a later deadline in June, the consideration levels for admission would have to increase dramatically, as we would see an extremely large increase in applications, and we have limitations on how many transfers can enroll in the Summer/Fall. UGA only has space to enroll approximately 1,700 transfer students for the Summer/Fall term, and as such we need to control the size of the transfer class. We generally enroll about 1,000 or so transfers in the Spring term, as space opens up on campus (classroom space, parking, etc.) due to a substantial number of students who graduate in December. As such, Spring term admission is possible for a large number of applicants who might not meet the semester hour requirement/consideration levels for Fall term.
Timelines
- Generally, we begin our review of transfer files in early February, with Summer files being looked at first and then Fall files due to the timing of enrollment. Both Summer and Fall applicants are reviewed in the same way and using the same consideration levels, so we suggest applying for the term in which you actually want to start. We will begin releasing decisions on March 12, and the initial decisions will be a large mix of summer and fall students. We release decisions in the late afternoon on Fridays, and after the initial transfer decision release, we will then release decisions every Friday afternoon until we are finished with the transfer files (with the only exception being March 18, a Thursday, to avoid overlapping with the final Freshman decision date on March 19). We will generally look at applications based on when the file is complete (application is submitted and all transcripts are received for the student), but some files are more complicated than others and make be looked at later in the process.
- While we can give a rough projection on the timelines for decision releases, we cannot guess about individual decision dates. Even students who applied on the same date might have different decision dates due to when their transcripts came in, how many people applied around that date (roughly 1,000 people applied in the first few days), and how challenging the transcripts are to review.
Transfer Review Process
- When UGA reviews a file for transfer admission, we are focusing on two areas for the most part; How many hours of transfer work has been completed and is on a transcript, and what is the GPA that UGA calculates for the transfer work. All grades/hours that will be reviewed must be on a transcript by the application deadline. Advanced placement (AP/IB) credit listed as specific courses with specific hours and college course titles and course numbers on a college transcript may be transferable. UGA requires official transcripts from all colleges attended, even if the work is from dual enrollment courses, transient work at another college, etc.
- UGA Admissions requires at least 30 semester hours of completed transfer work from another college to be submitted on an official transcript by the deadline. If a student is below the 30 hour threshold, we will deny the application due to not meeting the requirement. We also have set up our application to give a warning to all applicants who list less than 30 hours of transfer work completed to let them know of the situation.
- UGA does not look at in-progress work when making decisions, so all materials must be submitted to our office by the stated deadline.
- UGA requirements state that a student must have completed 30 tranferrable hours by the application deadline (this can include AP/IB credit listed as coursework on an official college transcript), and that the student must have been out of high school for a year prior to the start of their initial term at UGA. As such, a student with a large amount of dual enrollment could not apply to UGA as a transfer for the fall after they graduate from high school (they would apply as a freshman). For transfer applicants, we want to see at least a full year of college work post high school to make a good determination about admission.
- We have a Transfer FAQ with more details about some specific transfer questions, and it also goes into detail about how courses transfer into UGA.