How to Transfer to Penn Foster

Ready to continue your education? 

When you’re thinking about enrolling in a program to finish or further your education, you probably have a list of questions before you make your final decision. After questions like “is this school legitimate” and “how does online school work,” you want to know whether or not you’ll have to repeat classes you’ve successfully finished in the past or if you can pick up where you left off. Can you transfer to Penn Foster? And do the classes you finish at Penn Foster count toward degrees at other schools? Here’s what you need to know about transferring your credits. 

How do transfer credits work? 

Transferring credits you’ve earned from one school to another can depend on a few different things. In general, a school will check your records to see if the classes you’ve completed match any they offer. They want to ensure that what you learned there is similar enough that you won’t be left behind or at a disadvantage in more advanced classes. It’s not often as simple as an English class transferring as English to a new school. For example, if you took an American Literature course, it’s not going to be the same as a British Literature course. A school likely would not consider those classes interchangeable. 

A few things all schools look at when deciding what classes they will or won’t transfer in include

• The school you’re transferring from
• The school’s accreditation
• Your grades
• When you finished the class

Each school, though, can ultimately decide what credits and work they will or won’t accept even if your previous education meets all the requirements. 

Transferring to Penn Foster High School

If you’re an adult learner hoping to finish your high school education or a traditional student looking for a more flexible way to complete your courses on your schedule, transferring some classes in can save you time and money. After all, you don’t want to waste time repeating courses you’ve already successfully completed, right? It makes more sense to pick up where you left off. So how does the school decide what class you’ll start with? By taking a look at your transcripts! You can either decide to have an evaluation before you enroll or after. Here’s how. 

Before you enroll. If you’re not absolutely sure that online high school is right for you and you want to know how much work you have left to graduate before making a tuition payment, getting a pre-evaluation of your transcripts can help. A pre-evaluation is a very good estimate of what classes will transfer into Penn Foster High School based on your unofficial transcripts. Transcripts are considered unofficial if they are not in a sealed envelope directly from the school.

To start the process, it’s best to reach out to an Admissions Specialist at 1.888.427.6500. They’ll advise you on the best way to send in your unofficial transcripts (email or fax are the fastest) and reach out to you when your evaluation is done to go over the classes you are expected to take. From there, you can make the decision to enroll. Whether or not you decide that Penn Foster is the right online school for you, this pre-evaluation is at no-cost. 

If you do decide to enroll after your evaluation, you’ll need to make sure you send in official transcripts from your school.

After you enroll. You want to make sure you have your previous school send your transcripts to Penn Foster in a sealed envelope or through an eligible digital transcript service like Parchment. You’ll be able to get started on the first three classes while you’re waiting for us to receive and evaluate your credits so you don’t feel like you’re wasting any time! Whether you enroll online or with an Admissions Specialist, you’ll want to have your official transcripts sent in ASAP. If they’re being mailed in, make sure you include your Student ID on the envelope and mail to: 

Penn Foster
200 Hickory Street
Scranton PA 18505

The transcript evaluators will decide what classes to transfer into your program based on 

• Legible information. Your full name must be on the transcript, as well as the name of your school. If we can’t match the transcript to your account, you may not receive credit. We also need to be able to verify the school you attended is, or was, accredited when you took your classes there. 
• Passing grades. A grade of D or above is considered passing at Penn Foster. If your school assigned number grades to classes, you’d have to have earned a 60 or better to be considered passing. 
• Comparable courses. The classes you took should be similar to what’s offered in the Penn Foster diploma program in order to transfer. 

Once your transcripts have been completely evaluated, you’ll see the classes that transferred in blocked out on your Learner Center.

Transferring to Penn Foster College.

Whether you’ve already completed a full degree program, or just finished a few semesters before having to leave college, you could have credits that can be transferred into an online Penn Foster college degree. Similar to transferring to Penn Foster High School, students who want their college classes evaluated should have their school send official copies of their transcripts to the registrar via the Scranton address. If the school uses digital transcript services, you can request transcripts to be sent that way. 

The registrar evaluates your transcripts for a few things, such as 

• Passing grades. The minimum passing grade for college courses is a C, or a number grade of 70.
• Comparable, eligible courses. Do the classes align with what you need to learn in your degree program?
• Completed full semesters. To transfer college credits, you must have completed the entire semester(s) in which you took those classes. An incomplete semester means that you didn’t finish the class and that you haven’t earned the full credit for that work. 

Unlike high school transfer credits, there are some rules specific to certain college courses or programs. For example, if you’re enrolling in the Veterinary Technician Associate’s Degree, you can transfer in eligible general education courses but no vet medicine courses. If a science or computer course you took is older than 7 years, it isn’t eligible for transfer since so much can be updated in that timeframe. 

Can Penn Foster credits transfer to other schools? 

After working through your online courses, you may realize you want to continue your education by going to college. You’ll want to know if your completed work could transfer to another school that works for you. While Penn Foster’s schools have accreditation (regional and national for high school, national for college) and our college courses have ACE Credit Recommendations, meaning they meet requirements for transferring to other degree programs, it’s important to remember that it’s ultimately up to the school to decide whether or not they’ll accept your courses.

You’ll need to send official transcripts to the school you want to transfer to, so you can call in to order them at 1.888.427.1000 or order them online. 

You can finish what you started with Penn Foster. 

Even if it’s been a while since you’ve been in school, it’s never too late to go back. With transfer credits, you can also speed up the time it can take to complete the high school diploma or a degree. Not sure how to start the process? Reach out to an Admissions Specialist today at 1.888.427.6500 to take the next step toward going back to school.