Non-Brandeis Summer School

These instructions are for non-Brandeis summer school petitions offered at schools within the United States. To petition for non-Brandeis summer school at an international school, please visit the Office of Study Abroad.

Students may petition the Office of the University Registrar to take summer school courses outside of Brandeis toward the Brandeis University degree. Approved courses are for requirement purpose only. This means that the courses can be used toward general university requirements and major/minor requirements, but the grades and units will NOT be transferred. Students are advised not to take a course for which written approval has not been received.

Minimum Transfer Credit Requirements

  • Acceptable summer sessions comprise a minimum of five weeks and 37 contact hours; foreign language courses require 52 contact hours.
  • A minimum grade of B-minus or better must be earned in the course.
  • Students cannot earn credit for more than three semester courses in a single summer; two courses in a single session. (The three-semester course maximum applies to both Brandeis and non-Brandeis summer school courses. The total number of summer courses that can be applied to a student's degree, no matter where the courses are taken, cannot exceed three semester courses in a single summer.)
  • Course content must be deemed appropriate by the Office of the University Registrar.
  • For Chemistry, you must petition for, and successfully complete, a two-semester sequence of courses. A lecture sequence may be taken without the labs, but a lab sequence cannot be taken without the lectures unless the lecture sequence is already complete. Students taking lectures and labs concurrently must take the full sequence of courses at the same institution. Online courses will not be accepted, and the syllabus must reflect in-person teaching.
  • A summer semester syllabus is required for chemistry and business course petitions. Please do not submit a fall/spring syllabus. The department wants to review how the course is taught in the shorter summer time frame.
  • Each course syllabus must include Prerequisites (if there are any); The title and authors of the textbook used (if there is one); The topics of the individual classes (please also upload the course schedule if the syllabus does not show these). We need this information to evaluate whether the scope and level of another college’s course are equivalent to those of a Brandeis course.
Please send any questions about non-Brandeis Summer School credit to transfer@brandeis.edu.

Student Instructions

  1. Complete the summer school petition. You may petition for up to two courses at a time. Lecture and lab sequences must be entered separately. (e.g., input lecture information as Course 1; input lab information as Course 2).
  2. You will be required to upload a course syllabus for each course. If a current syllabus is not available, you can upload the syllabus for a different semester as long as the course content is the same. For chemistry and business course petitions, a summer semester syllabus is required.
  3. Online courses require additional information.
  4. After the course(s) are complete, students must mail an official transcript to the address below. Official electronic transcripts are also accepted and should be emailed to transfer@brandeis.edu.

Office of the University Registrar
Brandeis University
415 South Street, MS 068
Waltham, MA 02453