Transfer Credit: Secondary School

You do not have to apply for secondary school transfer credit, but you do need to ensure that your official final results are sent to the University of Toronto. You can find instructions on how to send your final results in your JOIN U of T portal. After your official final results have been received by the University of Toronto, your secondary school courses and exams will be assessed for transfer credit, and you will be awarded any transfer credits for which you are eligible.

Secondary school transfer credits are typically awarded in August, September or October, depending on your secondary school curriculum. You will be notified via email when your transfer credits have been awarded, and you will be able to see them in ACORN and Degree Explorer. 

You can use your secondary school transfer credits in a number of ways:

Degree credits: Every Arts & Science student has to complete 20.0 credits to obtain their degree, and secondary school transfer credits count toward those 20.0 credits. Secondary school transfer credits are 100-level credits. Keep in mind that you need to complete a minimum of 13.0 credits at the 200-level or higher to meet your degree requirements. While you can take as many 100-level courses as you want, not all of them will help you progress toward completing your degree.

Breadth requirement: The majority of secondary school transfer credits count towards breadth requirement (BR) categories. 

Program requirements and course prerequisites: In some cases, secondary school transfer credits can be used to satisfy enrolment or completion requirements for specific programs, or to meet prerequisite requirements for courses.

Your secondary school transfer credits do not have grades/marks associated with them; your scores for your secondary school exams are only used only to determine whether you are eligible for transfer credit. Your transfer credits therefore do not contribute to your grade point average (GPA) calculations.

More information about how transfer credits can be used to fulfill breadth requirements, program requirements and course prerequisites can be found on the secondary school curricula pages, as well as in the Academic Calendar. If you are unsure about how your transfer credits can be used towards your degree and program requirements, contact your College Registrar’s Office for advice. You may also wish to contact the appropriate academic unit if you have questions about course prerequisites or program requirements.

Yes. If the transfer credit equivalency chart for your secondary school curriculum indicates that a transfer credit that you have received is considered to be an equivalent to a specific Faculty of Arts & Science course, you can still take that course during your undergraduate degree for degree credit.

For example, if you received transfer credit for IB Higher Level Geography, your academic record will show JEG1**H “100 (BR=5)” and GGR1**H “107 (BR=3)”. These transfer credits are considered equivalent to JEG100H1 and GGR107H1.

If you received transfer credit for IB Higher Level Geography, you can still take JEG100H1 and/or GGR107H1, and these courses will not be repeated courses, meaning that they will contribute toward your overall number of credits.

You can also take any course that lists JEG100H1 and GGR107H1 as exclusions and receive degree credit for this course. In addition, these transfer credits and the U of T courses, if you choose to take them, will each contribute 0.5 credits toward Breadth Requirement Category 5: Physical and Mathematical Universes or Breadth Requirement Category 3: Society and Its Institutions.

You may want to consider taking the Faculty of Arts & Science course to which your transfer credit is equivalent, particularly if it has been a long time since you took the course in secondary school, to ensure that you are comfortable with the content before moving on to 200-level courses.

You should get advice from your College Registrar’s Office about planning your course load in first year. Although transfer credits contribute to the 20.0 credits required for your degree and you may want to take fewer courses in your first year, a reduced course load in first year may have implications for your student status (full-time or part-time), fees, financial aid, legal status and program enrolment. Your College Registrar’s Office will be able to advise you based on your specific situation. 

The transfer credit equivalency chart for your secondary school curriculum provides helpful guidance on what courses you should take in your first year in Arts & Science. Your transfer credits will not be added to your academic record by the time course enrolment begins. Even if your transfer credits have not been added to your academic record, you can and should enrol in courses when your enrolment start date and time arrive. 

If you have not yet received a transfer credit assessment and are getting ready to enrol, you can put together an informal assessment yourself to help guide your initial course choices. You can make changes to your course enrolment later if you need to.

• Review the secondary school curricula above to see what transfer credits you will receive.
• Decide which Faculty of Arts & Science programs might interest you. Look at the program enrolment requirements in the Academic Calendar. The courses listed in those requirements are the ones you should prioritize for enrolment. If you expect to receive transfer credits equivalent to those courses, you can choose to either enrol in these courses or not.
• Your transfer credits may be able to be used for prerequisites. ACORN will allow you to enrol in a course even if the prerequisite is not officially on your academic record, but the academic unit that offers the course is allowed to remove you from the course. Contact the academic unit to ask for permission to remain enrolled while you are waiting for your transfer credits to be added to your academic record.
• Plan your course load. Secondary school transfer credits do not count toward your course load or contribute to your full-time/part-time status. Most students enroll in 5.0 Arts & Science credits in their first year.
• We encourage you to contact your College Registrar’s Office in advance of your enrolment start date and time to discuss your plan for your course enrolment in first year.

Keep in mind that you need to complete a minimum of 13.0 credits at the 200-level or higher for your degree requirements. While you can take as many 100-level courses as you want, not all of them will help you progress toward completing your degree.

In some cases, you may not wish to keep the transfer credits you received from your secondary school studies. It is advised that you forfeit these credits at the end of your first year. Since your transfer credits count toward the 20.0 credits required for your degree and, in most cases, your breadth requirements, you should discuss whether or not you should forfeit any of your secondary school transfer credits with your College Registrar’s Office. Once you forfeit a secondary school transfer credit, it will be removed from your academic record and will not count toward any aspect of your degree or program requirements, including your overall number of credits and breadth requirements. 

If you wish to forfeit credits for a secondary school course, you have to forfeit all of the credits for that course. You cannot forfeit partial credits for one particular course.

Forfeiting transfer credits can have an impact on your tuition fees if you decide to enrol in a deregulated fees program. If you receive 4.0 or more transfer credits from your secondary school curriculum, your first-year tuition fees will be retroactively assessed after you enrol in a deregulated fees program, and you will see an increase in your fees. If you forfeit some of these transfer credits, you will not be retroactively charged deregulated program fees.

Your College Registrar’s Office can help you understand the impact of keeping or forfeiting your secondary school transfer credits. If you wish to forfeit one or more of your secondary school transfer credits, complete the Secondary School Transfer Credit Forfeit Form and email it to your College Registrar’s Office.

Dual-enrolment secondary school students who are completing post-secondary courses as part of their secondary school diploma may be eligible to receive transfer credit. The secondary school official transcript must list all the dual enrolment courses explicitly. Additional information or documentation may be requested to confirm the nature of the program. You will have to submit a transfer credit application and pay the $30 application fee, as well as arrange to send an official transcript to us. 

Please keep in mind that you should be declaring your complete academic background, including dual-enrolment studies, when you apply to the University of Toronto. Requests for transfer credit will not be considered for studies not declared on your application. 

Important to note:

Certain admission categories or programs of study in the Faculty of Arts & Science do not accept transfer students or have restrictions for transfer credits. 

For example, students with previous post-secondary studies (at the University of Toronto or another post-secondary institution) are not eligible to apply directly into the Computer Science admission category or program of study. Students admitted into the Computer Science admission category or program of study are not eligible for transfer credits for dual-enrolment courses.

It is the applicant's responsibility to review the requirements for any other admission categories or programs of study they are interested in, and any transfer credit related restrictions. 

Please email ask.artsci@utoronto.ca for more information.