Success Starts Here

Commonwealth Transfer Compact

Advising Live

If you are a NECC Student first
Log into Self-Service.

If you are not a student, click on the image below:

If Advising live is offline, please email advising.


Adopted in 1990, this policy concerns all students who are transferring from a Massachusetts state community college to a four year Massachusetts state college or university with an Associate of Arts transfer degree or an Associate of Science transfer degree. The compact provides that the degree will be transferred as a unit (providing the student meets all admissions requirements and is accepted) and will be applied toward a bachelor's degree if the following courses are included in the associate degree:

  1. 6 semester hours of English composition/writing
  2. 9 semester hours of behavioral and social sciences
  3. 9 semester hours of humanities and fine arts
  4. 8 semester hours of natural or physical science (with a laboratory component)
  5. 3 semester hours of mathematics

The 35 credits in general education specified above will be applied toward the fulfillment of the receiving institutions general education requirements. A minimum of 25 additional credits will be accepted by the receiving institution. These credits may be transferred as free electives, towards the receiving institution's additional general education requirements, towards the students major, or any combination, as the receiving institution deems appropriate.

Other points of clarification regarding the Compact include:

  1. The student must complete the Associate Degree with a minimum of 60 semester hours exclusive of developmental coursework.
  2. The Transfer Compact requirements must be fulfilled while meeting the requirements for the Associates Degree.
  3. A student must have achieved a cumulative grade point average of not less than 2.0 at the community college awarding the degree to receive Transfer Compact status.
  4. A Compact student may be required to take no more than the 68 additional credits at the four-year college unless: the student changes his/her major upon entrance; or additional general education requirements and/or requirements of the major total more than 68 credits.
  5. The grade of "D" or "D-" will be accepted toward the bachelor's degree, but a receiving institution is required to apply "D" or "D-" credit toward a major only if it does so for "native" students, that is students who have been enrolled in the four year institution as freshman.
  6. Transfer Compact status does not assure admission to any state college or university. It only assures acceptance of college-level credit.