Course-equivalency Credit
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- Course-equivalency credit is the substitution of credit for a
specific UF course in place of credit for a course taken at another
institution. With this type of credit granted, the non-UF course meets
all the requirements that the substituted UF course meets. One
important example involves the Statewide
Course-Numbering System (SCNS): a course taken at any
Florida public university or community college ("FPUCC") will
transfer to UF, with course-equivalency credit for a UF course with
the identical number, if a course with that number is offered
at UF1.
Note: "Course-equivalency credit" is the term used by
the math department for this type of credit; other departments and
units at UF may refer to the same type of credit by a different name.
The granting of course-equivalency credit is not automatic
(except in cases covered by the SCNS) and
is not governed by the name of the course; see How do I obtain course-equivalency credit for a math
course? below.
Example 1. Your major, Electrical Engineering, requires MAC
2312 (Calculus and Analytic Geometry 2) and MAP 2302 (Elementary
Differential Equations, for which MAC 2312 is a prerequisite). UF
receives an official transcript from Gatorbait University showing that
you received a C or better in a course called "Math 202: Calculus for
Science and Engineering Majors 2" there. UF will enter this
information in your UF transcript, but will supply a "dummy number"
such as MAC 0000 (a number that does not correspond to any UF course),
which will show on the same line of your UF transcript as Math 202
shows.
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Without equivalency credit for Gatorbait's Math 202, you will
not automatically meet the Calculus 2 requirement for your major, and
you will not be considered to have met the prerequisite for MAP 2302.
Your major department may, at its discretion, decide to accept
Gatorbait's Math 202 in lieu of Engineering's Calculus 2 requirement,
but it does not have the authority to grant course-equivalency credit
for MAC 2312 (only the math department has that authorit), since that
would affect the way your Gatorbait course is treated by every other
department and unit at UF, including Mathematics. Only the math
department will be able to enroll you in MAP 2302.
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With equivalency credit, Gatorbait's Math 202
will automatically meet both the Calculus 2 requirement for your major
and the prerequisite for MAP 2302.
If you submit a course-equivalency request to the math department for,
say, MAC 2313 (Calculus and Analytic Geometry 3), it will not matter
whether the other institution's name for its course was "Calculus for
Science and Engineering Majors 3", "Really Intense Calculus for Math
Whizzes 2", or "Carrots for Parrots: the Fascinating History of Pet
Food". The math department will not base its evaluation on what
another college chooses to call its course.
Note: Transfer credit is not the same
as course-equivalency credit. The term "transfer credit" may be used
simply to mean the acceptance of credits earned at another institution
as hours towards the 120 needed for a UF degree, and perhaps towards
other broad requirements such as General Education. In Example 1, the
fact that Gatorbait's Math 202 shows on your UF transcript at all
means that you've been given transfer credit for it; the same line on
your transcript will list the number of hours you've been credited
with. "Transfer credit" is also sometimes used as an umbrella term
that includes many types of credit, including course-equivalency
credit.
You may hear what the math department calls
"course-equivalency credit" referred to by other names, including
"equivalency", "transfer-equivalency credit", "transfer-credit
equivalency", and "course substitution". In any important conversation
relating to credits used towards your UF degree for work not done at
UF, make sure you describe the type of credit you're talking
about; don't just refer to it by name.
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- Placement into a course is simply permission for you to
take that course (and only if a seat is available). Placement may be
achieved by meeting all prerequisites (either directly or by being
granted course-equivalency credit for prerequisites you would
otherwise lack) or by waiver of whatever prerequisite(s) you
lack. Only the department offering the course has the authority to
waive a prerequisite.
Note: no method of placement guarantees you a seat in a
course.
For math courses having other math courses as prerequisites, it is
easier to be granted a waiver of prerequisite than to be granted
course-equivalency credit for the prerequisite. Even if a non-UF
course you took was not truly equivalent to the course UF lists
as a prerequisite, it may have covered enough of the necessary
material to meet the spirit of the prerequisite, in which case a
waiver is likely to be granted. Or, the Undergraduate Coordinator in
the Department of Mathematics department may simply decide from the
title and/or catalog-description of your non-UF course that your
course is
likely to have covered the prerequisite material you need to
know in order to take the UF course you want, and may waive the
prerequisite on that basis.
When the Department grants course-equivalency credit for a non-UF
course (or signs a statement that the non-UF course was equivalent to
a specific UF course), it is assuring every advisor, instructor, and
administrator at UF that for all purposes to which that course
might be put at UF, you have achieved at least as good an outcome as
you would have from taking the subsituted UF course. Thus, other units
at UF rely on the accuracy of the Department's evaluation. The
Department's reputation as a certifying authority, as well as UF's
reputation, is put at risk.
By contrast, when the Department grants placement into a course by
waiving a prerequisite, it is primarily the student who assumes
the risk. If the student is not adequately prepared for the course, he
or she will do poorly. Therefore the Department does not need nearly
as much proof of preparation to waive the prerequisite as it would to
grant course-equivalency credit for it (see How
do I obtain course-equivalency credit for a math course?
below). Of course, the Department's representative with whom you meet
to make the request (a math advisor or the
Undergraduate Coordinator) will still give you his or her best advice
based on the information you present; you will not be granted a waiver
of prerequisite if the representative thinks you are unlikely to have
been adequately prepared for the course you want to take.
Example 2. You transferred to UF as a junior, having already
taken Calculus 1-2-3 and an introductory Differential Equations
course. At UF, you have already taken MAS 3114 (Computational Linear
Algebra). You now want to take MAP 4305 (Differential Equations for
Engineers and Physical Scientists), which has two prerequisites: MAP
2302 (Elementary Differential Equations) and either MAS 3114 or MAS
4105 (Linear Algebra), but ISIS blocks you because you have not
officially met the MAP 2302 prequisite. You major department (which,
unless it's the math department, has no authority to grant you
course-equivalency credit for MAP 2302) has already granted you credit
towards your major for its Calculus 1-2-3 and Differential
Equations requirements, so you have no need for course-equivalency
credit for MAP 2302 other than that it would give you placement into
MAP 4305.
You meet with the math department's Undergraduate Coordinator (UGC)
and ask to have the MAP 2302 prerequisite waived. The UGC looks at
your transcript, sees that you completed MAS 3114 with a grade of at
least C, and sees that you have transfer credit
from Gatorbait University for a course called "Introduction to
Differential Equations". From his or her experience evaluating
courses, the UGC knows that certain core material is common to almost
all introductory differential equations courses. The UGC also knows
that knowledge of this core material is all that's needed for MAP
4305, regardless of whether the other material in MAP 2302 was covered
in the Gatorbait course. On these grounds, UGC waives the MAP 2302
prerequisite and allows you into MAP 4305 on a space-available basis.
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- You need (or should very much want) course-equivalency credit in either
of these circumstances:
- Your major department says that you need it. (More precisely,
your department would say that if the math department doesn't declare
your non-UF course to be equivalent to a specific UF course, then
you'll have to take that course at UF, even if that would mean
repeating a large amount of material.)
- You want to apply a non-UF course towards a content-specific
elective requirement.
In other circumstances, placement rather
than course-equivalency credit may suffice.
One factor affecting whether you need to request
course-equivalency is whether your non-UF course was taken at a
Florida public university or community college ("FPUCC"). FPUCC
courses use the
Statewide Course-Numbering System: a course taken anywhere in the
FPUCC system will transfer to UF, with course-equivalency credit for a UF
course with the identical number, if a course with that number
is offered at UF1. In this case you do not need to ask for
course-equivalency credit; it's given automatically. If UF does not
offer an identically numbered course1, but offers one that
you believe has very similar content, in order to receive
course-equivalency credit you (or an advisor or similar
representative) will have to ask the math department to evaluate your
course; see How do I obtain course-equivalency
credit for a math course? below. Depending on the outcome of the
evaluation, you may or may not receive course-equivalency credit.
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- The exact procedure depends upon which college houses your major,
but always involves a course-equivalency evaluation by the math
department. For majors in most colleges, you simply go to the math
department, necessary materials in hand, and
request the evaluation. If you are in the College of Business, your
college office will have you fill out a Course Equivalency Request
form, collect the necessary materials from you, send everything to the
math department, and await a response. If you are in the College of
Engineering, your college office may give you a form to take to be
taken to the math department.
If your non-UF course is determined to be equivalent to a UF
course, then, depending on your college, the math department's
representative will either (i) directly make the substitution in your
student records that effects course-equivalency credit (this is the
way the process works if your college is Liberal Arts and Sciences),
or (ii) sign a course-equivalency form that you obtain from your
college office (this is the way the process works if you are in the
College of Business, the College of Engineering, or any other college
that uses such a form), and someone in your college office will make
the actual substitution in your student records.
What the math department will need to see.
In order to approve a course-equivalence request, the math department
needs detailed information on the material covered in the non-UF
course. The textbook used and a brief (e.g. one-paragraph)
description from the course catalog are necessary pieces of
information but not sufficient. Usually the extra information
the math department needs can be provided by supplying
- (preferred) a list of chapter sections covered (titles, not
just numbers), photocopied from the textbook (or printed
out from a webpage), together with
the instructor's syllabus stating that these sections were
covered; or
- a syllabus distributed by the instructor that contains a
detailed list of topics covered (at least the same level of
detail that a list of chapter-section titles would provide); or
- a copy of all the exams the student took in the course.
If you took the course a long time ago, it may be
very difficult to obtain materials for the year in which you took it
(or you may still have some materials, such as the syllabus, but you
no longer have the textbook from which to photocopy the table of
contents). In that case, try to obtain the materials for a recent
offering of the course at the same institution, and a letter from the
department that offered the course stating that the content of the
course has not changed substantively since the year in which you took
it.
Instances in which course-equivalence requests will automatically be
rejected are:
- The only provided description of the syllabus is the one from the
course catalog, and/or an instructor's summary of the course content
at the same level of detail as the course catalog.
- In place of a detailed description of course content, the student
enumerates the chapter-sections covered, but does not provide a
photocopy or webpage-printout of the book's table of contents showing
the titles of these chapter sections.
- In place of a detailed description of course content, the student
provides a list of homework assignments of the form "section 9.3
problems 1-20" but does not provide a photocopy or webpage-printout of
the book's table of contents showing the titles of the chapter
sections.
- The textbook-information provided does not match what's in the
syllabus, and you do not have a letter addressing the mismatch as
described above.
Example: The syllabus
you supply shows that your textbook was Barnum and Bailey, Calculus
for Clowns, 3rd edition, but the table of contents you provide,
obtained from amazon.com, is for the 5th edition (whose
section-numbering may be different from that of the 3rd edition) or is
for Brief Calculus for Clowns, 3rd edition (which is likely to
be a very different book, treating topics more cursorily).
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- In principle, yes. However, in practice, courses taken outside the
U.S. often have no equivalent at UF. When you submit course-materials
as described under How do I obtain course-equivalency
credit for a math course?, the math
department will evaluate whether there is any UF course equivalent to
(or wholly contained within) the course(s) that you took at the
foreign institution.
If there is no such UF course, the math department will not grant
you course-equivalency credit. This is true even if the course was
taken as part of a study-abroad program, and another department or
unit at UF has promised that you would get credit for a UF course for
every course that you took in the program. Study-abroad programs
are wonderful opportunities, and the math department wholeheartedly
encourages students to take advantage of them, but this does not bear
on the question of whether two courses are equivalent. "Equivalent"
does not mean "closest-fitting". The math department is glad to
cooperate with your study-abroad sponsor by evaluating your
course. To avoid potential problems, you should have any math course
you're thinking of taking in a study-abroad program evaluated by
the UF math department
before you take it; see below .
Often, the content of a foreign course will straddle two or more
UF courses; for example, the foreign course may cover half of course A
and half of course B. In this example, if you also took a course at
the same institution that covered the remaining half of course A, the
math department will generally grant you course-equivalency credit for
course A. For students transferring to UF from foreign universities
this can be significant: the foreign courses may not literally be
equivalent to UF courses on a one-to-one basis, but the
collection of foreign courses may be equivalent to a
collection of UF courses, in which case the math department
will grant equivalency credit for the collection of courses whose
content it is satisfied have been covered.
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- Obtain as many of the course materials as possible that are
listed under How do I obtain course-equivalency
credit for a math course?
and ask the math department to evaluate the course for potential
equivalency. If the Department's representative (usually the
Undergraduate Coordinator) determines that equivalency is warranted,
obtain a signed letter or form from him/her to that effect, so that
when you return to UF the course-equivalency credit can be granted
without re-evaluation.
The math department recognizes that it may be difficult or
impossible to obtain detailed information about a course in advance,
especially for a course to be taken outside the U.S.
Nonetheless, this is the information needed if you want to be
promised course-equivalency credit in advance. Given only
partial information, the Department's representative will be able to
give you only his or her best advice, which may be "I don't think this
course will be equivalent to a UF course" or "I think this is likely
to end up being equivalent to our course ABC 1234, but I can't promise
you."
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- No. Regardless of how well you know the material, University of
Florida rules prohibit the granting of credit for anything other than
a course taken at a college, with the exceptions of
credit awarded for high enough scores on AICE, AP, CLEP or IB
exams (which are not administered by UF). If you do not have an
official college transcript showing credit for a course, or an
official AICE, AP, CLEP, or IB transcript confirming an adequate
score, you cannot receive any sort of credit for that course at UF.
(Note: This is not actually an issue of
course-equivalency credit at all, since there is no course on
your non-UF transcript for which you are asking to have UF credit
substituted.)
If you are an entering student and clearly demonstrate to the
Department of Mathematics' Undergraduate Coordinator (UGC) that you
know the content of various lower-level courses, such as Calculus 3
and Differential Equations, but don't have transfer credit for these
courses because you have no college transcript showing them, the UGC
will give you placement into higher-level courses. If you are also a
math major and the courses involved are major requirements (such as
Calculus 3 and Differential Equations), usually the UGC will allow you
to substitute some higher-level courses for your lower-level
requirements rather than simply waive those requirements. Thus, to
graduate you probably will have to take as many UF math courses as
would any math major entering with AP credit for Calculus 1 and 2, but
the courses you take will be more advanced.
1 Actually the full seven-character codes need not be
identical, as long as the three letters and the last three digits are
identical. Thus, for example, if you successfully completed a course
numbered "MAC 1311" or "MAC 3311" at another Florida public university
or community college, you would automatically receive
course-equivalency credit for MAC 2311 at UF. However, if the course
were numbered "MAC 2321", then even if the course had the
same name as UF's MAC 2311, Analytic Geometry and Calculus 1, you
would not automatically receive course-equivalency credit for
any UF course.
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