Office of the University Registrar

College Work Done While in High School/Gap Year/Health Deferral

For students who were accepted to Brandeis University as first-year or mid-year students, a combined maximum of four courses (16 credits) from external sources may be applied toward the 128 credits needed for graduation. External credit sources include: qualifying AP/IB/A-Level exam scores, fall semester courses for midyear admits prior to matriculation, courses taken on a leave of absence, fall/spring pre-matriculation college coursework not needed for high school graduation, and fall/spring courses for students on a health deferral or gap year.

College courses taken while in high school or during a gap year may be transferred for numeric credit if a B- or better was earned, and if courses were not needed for high school graduation. 

In addition, summer and winter intersession sessions must comprise a minimum of five weeks and 37 contact hours. Foreign language courses require 52 contact hours. A student may earn credit for no more than three semester courses in a single summer (two semester courses in a single session).

If the work meets all of the above-mentioned criteria, you will need to:

  1. Complete the Petition for Evaluation of College Work Done While in High School/Gap Year/Health Deferral for each course.
  2. Provide a letter from your high school verifying that the course(s) were not used to fulfill high school graduation requirements.
  3. Submit an official transcript to the Office of the University Registrar. Electronic transcripts should be sent to transfer@brandeis.edu. Hard copy transcripts can be sent to the Registrar’s Office at the address below.

If your petition is approved, you may contact the appropriate department regarding major/minor credit and complete the Online Petition to Request Substitution for a Requirement.

Please send any questions regarding college work done while in high school to transfer@brandeis.edu.

Additional Notes on Gap year Programs

  • Brandeis University Policy regarding college-level work done in Israel is to accept credit only from the Israeli universities themselves (Bar-Ilan, Ben Gurion, Haifa, Hebrew, Technion, Tel-Aviv, and Weizman Institute). We do not accept credit from any of the private institutions or colleges in Israel, for “yeshiva programs” or other religious programs, for work done in Israel under the sponsorship of American agencies (e.g. Young Judea) or for any such work that appears as sponsored or derivative credit on the transcript of an American college or university.
  • We do not award numeric credit for Ulpan courses. If you intend to be a NEJS major/minor, you may wish to reach out to the department to explore placement options.

Principle of Equivalent Course Load

In general, courses accepted for transfer credit must be similar to those taught at Brandeis. Courses that, in our judgment, are inappropriate to a Brandeis University degree, carry fewer than two semester hours credit or carry a grade lower than C-minus (B-minus in summer school) are excluded from consideration.

For the BA/BS degrees, Brandeis requires 32 semester courses and a minimum academic residency of four fall/spring semesters, exclusive of Brandeis Summer School. Your transfer credit, expressed in semester courses, appears in the top right corner of your evaluation sheet. Since Brandeis does not measure progress toward the degree in terms of "semester hours" or "quarter hours," units such as these are converted to "semester courses" according to the formula below:

  • We ascertain the number of credits or courses required for the receipt of a bachelor's degree at the institution from which you are transferring courses. We total the number acceptable to us for transfer credit, divide by the requirement at your previous institution and multiply by 32 (the degree standard at Brandeis). For example, if your previous school requires 128 credits and you attended one semester, completing 16 credits acceptable for transfer, the equation will be 16/128 x 32 = 4.  Hence, one full semester at that institution will receive full credit at Brandeis.
  • If you worked at a higher or lower rate, credit transferred will reflect that rate. For example, if you complete 12 credits acceptable for transfer at a school that requires 120 credits for graduation, the equation is 12/120 x 32 = 3. In this scenario, the student will receive three Brandeis courses.
  • For two-year schools, we multiply by 16 (e.g., if the degree requirement is 60 credits, the equation will be #/60 x 16 = ?). Since Brandeis requires that at least 16 semester courses and four semesters of full-time study be completed here, no student may be awarded more than 16 semester courses upon transfer.
  • If the equation does not yield a whole number, we round up or down depending on the remainder. For .5 and above, we round up. For less than .5, we rounds down. (e.g. 3.2 is rounded down to 3 courses; 3.6 is rounded up to 4 courses)