Representatives from each undergraduate school at the Provost's Office worked to establish the principles shown below, which shall guide processes for awarding external credit (i.e. transfer credit) to undergraduate students.

Guiding Principles for Awarding of External Credit to Undergraduate Students

The mission of the University of Virginia includes the “development of the full potential of talented students from all walks of life,” as well as a “universal dedication to excellence and affordable access.” Just as talented students come from all walks of life, these students travel different paths to get to Grounds, and then to walk the Lawn for Final Exercises. By honoring our commitments to accessibility, opportunity, and academic excellence, we are committed to making sure that our systems, policies, and practices for awarding external credit for academic coursework completed prior to UVA will adhere to the following principles:

• We will adopt a student-centered, credit-affirming approach that values the different paths that students take to and through our curricula while preserving the excellence and the integrity of the degrees or credentials that students earn from the University. 
• We will ensure consistency and transparency in the awarding of external credit and equity in the application of external credit within and across schools, including through regular review of our policies and practices.  
• We will streamline policies and procedures to remove obstacles and avoid unnecessary barriers and complexity.
• We will support student success and degree completion by: 
  • awarding credit for prior coursework by considering whether the course is sufficiently equivalent to provide prerequisite knowledge needed for subsequent courses;
  • applying credit by considering the most beneficial route to degree progress.
• We will respect the expertise of schools and their faculties by ensuring that:
  • The authority to determine course equivalency rests with subject-matter experts in the school that owns the course mnemonic;
  • The authority to determine how the transferred course satisfies degree requirements rests with the student’s school of enrollment.