College Credit

Lawrence grants credit to transfer students as well as incoming first-year students who have successfully completed college-level coursework at an accredited college or university. Students also may receive credit for Advanced Placement (AP) tests and International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma or IB tests.

If you have completed any exams for college credit (e.g., Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate), please arrange for your test results to be sent to the Office of Admissions as soon as possible... that is, if you've been admitted and you wish to have us assess your work and potentially award you credit.

Lawrence typically awards credit for scores of 4 or 5. For more detail—way more detail—please dive into our course catalog and check the corresponding academic department's approach to evaluating scores (e.g., check the Spanish section to see how a 4 on your AP Spanish Lit test might turn out. Go ahead. We'll wait here...)

Lawrence awards credit  for International Baccalaureate (IB) examinations—with scores of 5, 6, or 7—in subject areas applicable to our liberal arts curriculum. For students who have earned an IB diploma, Lawrence offers 6 units of credit (essentially the equivalent of one full course) for each higher-level exam with scores of 5 or higher, and 3 units of credit for each standard-level exam. For students who have not earned an IB diploma, but have completed individual IB exams, Lawrence offers 6 units of credit for each higher-level examination. In either case—full diploma or individual examinations—Lawrence will award up to 48 units (approx. 8 courses, or just one short of a full year) of credit.

You'll find more information about our IB policy (including a list of the IB courses that apply to our liberal arts curriculum) in our course catalog in the section devoted to "Academic Procedures and Regulations." (It's more interesting than it sounds.)

If you have completed any college-level courses prior to enrolling at Lawrence, please arrange for your official college transcript(s) and course descriptions to be sent to our office as soon as possible. If the college-level course was taught in your high school and it appears on your high school transcript, we will still need to receive the official college transcript in order for our registrar to evaluate the course for credit at Lawrence.