UMich Online Course Guide (For Transfer Credit)
TLDR; It’s super tough to figure out how to take online courses at different universities AND have them count as credits here at UMich. I’m starting a list of online courses that transfer for credit at Michigan so you can save a whole lotta $$$$
As a student at UMich, I think it’s bullshit that there aren’t any tools to help students transfer in credits from online courses.
Taking credit online is such a move. It’s 10x easier and most importantly, 1/5th the price (typically $500-$1200 whereas credit at UMich out of state is $6000 — $8000).
Finding online courses that transfer however is super tough.
Here’s why:
- UMich’s course transfer site tells you very little information.
- There’s no way to know if the course is offered online through the site
- Hundreds of courses require you to get permission to take the course because the vast majority of UMich departments haven’t updated their approval for classes in years
- The school is strongly incentivized to make sure you don’t take courses online (means less $$$ for them).
This is the current process:
- Go to transfer site to see if a course transfers in
2. Enter UMich course numbers
3. Then, you need to search BY STATE! This is because the site was made to help students figure out if a class they’ve already taken will transfer, NOT to help you get credits outside of UMich
4. Then, 1 by 1 you need to go through each of the states until you find not only if this school offers the course, but also 1. if they offer the course in a specific term you want to take it 2. enable you to register without applying as a student and take it as a guest 3. can transfer it properly to your school 4. offers the course online 5. Michigan accepts the online version of that course (sometimes Michigan doesn’t even specify this on their site and you need approval from someone in the department).
Here’s an example of me going through one school to see if Psych 240 transfers
→ First, I went to the course on Alabama’s site as UMich said PSY 320 transfers in as Psych 240 here at Michigan
→ I went to Academics
→ Then, Browse undergrad programs
→ Realized there were no links for online options
→ Put in the search bar: “online”
→ clicked “what’s AMU online?”
→ Read the page and saw there was no instruction for doing online courses
→ back to google to search AMU online
→ went to a new site: https://www.amu.apus.edu/
→ Found under academics the tab “Individual courses
→ Searched under psychology
→ went back to course transfer to find the course transfer number of PSY 320
→ Copied this into the individual course seach
→ Nothing came up
→ Went back to the initial site of AMU (not online)
→ tried to find where to do another individual course search
→ Realized that the AMU online I went to was an entirely different institution
→ finally found this page: https://www.aamu.edu/about/administrative-offices/registrar/index.html
→ got to a course search
→ I found that this course was not offered online (or anywhere at this school) this coming summer.
This whole process to 20 minutes just to validate that at a single school, the course I wanted to take for transfer credit was simply not available. I don’t even know if this course will ever be available.
Now, lucky for you, I’ve done this for a few classes that have transferred into Michigan because at the end of the day, if it takes you 10 hours to figure out if you can get a class to transfer in properly, you may be saving over 100 hours of time over a semester in a class you’re only taking because it’s required by your major.
The courses I’ve taken online for credit at Michigan are as follows:
- UMass Amherst online → https://www.umass.edu/online/class/summer-2019/22063/cognitive-psych → PSYCH 315 → transfers in for Psych 240 at Michigan (3–4 credits)
- UMass Amherst online → https://www.umass.edu/online/class/spring-2019/21624/behavioral-neuroscience → PSYCH 330 → Human Neuropsych — Psych 345 at Michigan (3–4 credits)
- School Craft College → https://www.schoolcraft.edu/academics/widgets/course-description/PHIL/243 → Philosophy 243 → Intro to Philosophy at Mich (3 credits)
- BYU Online → https://is.byu.edu/catalog/BIO-100-M001 → Bio 100 → transfers in for Natural Science credits and I believe BIO 100 here at Mich. I never completed this because I changed majors, but my advisor said he’d sign off for the transfer here (don’t think it’s in the transfer site) (3 credits)
Total credit value: 12–14, almost an entire semester
Total time spent: ~80 hours combined
Total cost: ~$4,500 (the equivalent of 2 credits at Mich for out of state)
Total time saved: ~250 hours give or take
Total $$ saved: ~$19,000 (Compared to doing these all at UMich)
Send me an email at davidkob@umich.edu if you have any online courses that you know transfer into Michigan! Also, shoot me an email if you’d like me to send you a spreadsheet of any courses that others have sent my way.
