There are a number of situations in which a student may request credit for courses taken away from Brown. These include courses taken before transferring to Brown from another college or university, advanced placement work done prior to college, summer courses, and study abroad. This memo answers some questions that are frequently asked about such transfers of credit. Remaining questions should be addressed to the Transfer Credit Advisor. It is helpful to distinguish between course credits, which count toward the completion of the general course requirement for graduation from Brown, and concentration credits, which count towards completion of concentration requirements.
Standards are generally higher for the latter than for the former.
In particular, to receive credit toward fulfillment of concentration requirements in the Economics concentration, courses should be advanced economics courses, which means, among other things, that they have a pre-requisite of a theory course like Ec111 or Ec113. More elementary courses can often receive course credit but not concentration credit. The Business Economics concentration calls for all courses but one to be chosen from a restricted list, so ordinarily, courses taken elsewhere must correspond closely to a course on the list, or must be used in the one unrestricted slot, to meet requirements of that concentration. The Transfer Credit Advisor cannot authorize departures from the stated requirements of concentration programs. Any issues that arise in this regard can be discussed in a meeting with the Transfer Credit Advisor, but decisions must be taken by the designated advisor for the program in question.