Political Science

Study Abroad

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Transferring Credits

Students may transfer a total of four courses toward the 10-course concentration requirement. Transfer credits may be obtained from 

  • Prior coursework at another institution.
  • Study abroad programs outside the U.S.
  • Study away programs inside the U.S.

Students wishing to transfer credits from courses taken outside of Brown should first consult the University’s guidelines and procedures on this process. Students planning to study abroad should consult with their concentration advisor and the concentration subject approver (Professor Paul Testa, paul_testa@brown.edu) on their plan of study. Students must take transfer courses for a grade and must receive at least a C or better for the credit to transfer to Brown. Students may transfer a maximum of two courses per semester away toward the concentration requirement.

All transfer credit requests are approved first by the University, which makes determinations about the eligibility and course credit hour equivalencies. A course at Brown is equivalent to four U.S. semester credit hours. Courses at other institutions may only count as three or two credit hours, and will appear on your university transcript, as a fraction of a full course credit. 

Once your transfer credits have been approved by the university, the credit hours will appear on your transcript as unassigned credits (e.g. POLS Unassigned Credit 1.0 for a four credit-hour course and POLS Unassigned Credit 0.75 for a three credit-hour course).

To apply these credits toward your Political Science concentration, log into ASK and create a course equivalency request. You will need to:

  • upload a copy of the syllabus from the course
  • potentially upload an example of your coursework (e.g. term paper, exam, problem sets)
  • Find the equivalent course offered by the Department on CAB for which you will be applying your transfer credit towards the concentration requirement (e.g. the equivalent of “GOV 101 Introduction to American Politics” would be “POLS 0010 Introduction to the American Political Process” at Brown)

Course equivalencies are approved or denied by the concentration subject approver.  The process is generally straightforward for transfer credits that are approved by the university for full course credit at Brown and have a clear equivalent offering in the Department. 

For political science courses without a clear POLS equivalency at Brown, the concentration subject approver may request that the student submit the course equivalency request as  “POLS 1099T” which is used to denote courses that are not equivalent to any Brown POLS offering, but can be considered a 1000 level course.

In situations where the university has approved transfer credits for less than a full course equivalent at Brown, the concentration subject approver will likely ask to examine the syllabus and coursework completed for the course. 

In some situations, a three credit hour (0.75 course) course will be approved as fulfilling one of the requirements for the concentration. For example, a three-credit hour Introduction to American Politics taken at another peer institution can generally (conditional on the actual content and assignments of the course) be used to satisfy one of the two introductory course requirements for the concentration. 

Finally, in some situations, students may need to combine multiple transfer courses, to receive credit for the concentration. For example, suppose a student took two two-credit hour courses, one on China’s domestic politics, and one on China’s foreign policy. The university approved each for  0.5 course credits at Brown. The student can apply these half course credits to count toward one of the five 1000-level course concentration requirements. In ASK, the student should pick one course with a clear POLS equivalent and submit the second course as POLS 1099T For example the course on Chinese foreign policy could be counted as equivalent to “POLS 1350 Chinese Foreign Policy”, while the course on China’s domestic politics, would be approved as “POLS 1099T”. Only the course approved for POLS 1350 should be used in filling out the concentration declaration in ASK. 

Note that transferring credits toward your concentration requirement will prevent you from taking the equivalent POLS course at Brown. Students should reach out to the concentration subject approver (Paul Testa, paul_testa@brown.edu) with any questions.