Transfer Process Improvement
Purpose
The University of Utah is committed to supporting student success by ensuring timely, accurate, and equitable evaluation of transfer credit, and is implementing a series of system and process improvements—effective August 1, 2025—to address a significant backlog and streamline the transfer experience.
These changes, supported by the Office of Admissions, the Office of the University Registrar, Undergraduate Studies, and Strategic Enrollment and Student Success, include faster transcript processing, centralized evaluation of lower-division courses by the Registrar’s Office, and default articulation to general elective credit if departmental review is delayed.
While these updates aim to accelerate credit posting and reduce administrative burden, we deeply value faculty expertise and departmental input in shaping articulation decisions; departments are encouraged to provide evaluation rubrics and submit independent transfer databases to ensure consistency and uphold academic standards. Together, these efforts will create a more transparent, student-centered process that honors faculty voices and helps students make informed academic decisions and stay on track toward graduation.
What is Changing
We are implementing a series of updates to streamline the transfer credit process and improve the student experience:
Key Improvements
Faster Credit Evaluation:
Starting August 1, 2025, the Registrar’s Office will evaluate all lower-division transfer courses. This change will reduce turnaround times and ensure consistency across evaluations.
Clear Timelines for Department Review:
Upper-division courses will be sent to departments for review. If no response is received within one week, the Registrar’s Office will assign general elective credit.
System Modernization:
Transfer processing is moving to PeopleSoft, which will improve tracking, reduce manual work, and provide better visibility for students and advisors.
Test Credit Posting:
The Registrar’s Office will begin posting AP, IB, CLEP, and DSST test credits. This ensures students receive credit for prior learning without delay.
Collaboration with Departments:
A critical part of this work involves gathering evaluation criteria from departmental transfer coordinators. These criteria will help ensure that articulation decisions are academically sound and aligned with departmental expectations. This collaboration is essential to reducing delays and improving consistency.
Our Partners
This work has been a collaborative effort across multiple units:
- Office of Admissions
- Academic Departments
- University Information Technology (UIT)
- Undergraduate Studies
We’ve also actively engaged with transfer evaluators across campus. In particular, we piloted the new articulation rubrics with the Political Science, Psychology, and ESSF departments, which provided valuable feedback and demonstrated strong early results.
To inform our decisions, we've been gathering data on:
- Current processing timelines for transcript intake and review
- Departmental response times for articulation decisions
- Time required to code and implement articulation rules
This data-driven approach ensures that our changes are grounded in real operational needs and focused on removing barriers for students.
The Office of the University Registrar will use course-specific rubrics to guide evaluation wherever possible. Several departments have already submitted rubrics—thank you!
To support timely graduation and reduce barriers for students, direct course articulations are strongly encouraged. This helps ensure students receive appropriate credit and stay on track with their academic goals.
To contribute yours, please contact articulation@utah.edu.
For Direct Articulation to a Course and/or General Education (GE) Designation
| Criteria | Requirement |
| Department Code Alignment | Matches existing department subject code or clearly aligns with a similar department. |
| Course Number and Level | Clearly lower-division; matches institutional number conventions |
| Course Title | Closely or fully matches an existing course title and level; descriptive and specific |
| Date Taken | Content still current; taken within the University-approved age limit of courses (5 years) |
| Course Description Similarity | 80% content overlap with intuitional course; key concepts clearly align. |
| Credit Hours and System | Matches credit system and hours (within 1 credit); semester/quarter clearly identified. |
| Course Sequencing | Clearly part of a logical sequence that matches institutional structure. |
| Learning Outcomes | Fully aligned with institutional or GE; outcomes clearly stated. |
| General Education Criteria (If Applicable) | Meets all GE category criteria. |
| Transferability | Widely transferable; recognized across institutions. |
Registrar Guidelines
- Grades: The university will not accept any transfer work that indicates the earned grade is less than a D-, which is a USHE-established threshold for transfer
- No Lower-to-Upper Division Articulations: If a course with a lower number (ex: 100/1000 or 200/2000) appears upper-division, refer to the department.
- Departmental Evaluation Rubrics: To ensure consistent and accurate articulation decisions, we ask that departments provide evaluation rubrics for their courses. When available, these rubrics will be used to guide articulation (e.g., PSY 1010 may be auto-articulated if the course title is "General Psychology" or similar, and a rubric confirms alignment).