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Department of Psychological Sciences
Transfer of Coursework/Thesis

TRANSFER OF COURSEWORK/THESIS. For incoming students who already have graduate level coursework and theses from other institutions: if you want to be exempted from a requirement of our program (a required course or the Master’s thesis), you need to discuss your proposed exemption with your Program Director. 

If the Program Director gives you initial approval for the exemption, then (in the case of a course) you next bring the request to the instructor who normally teaches the course. You will be asked to provide him/her with the syllabus of each course that you took that forms the basis of your proposed exemption and any requested material that you produced for the course (tests, papers, etc.). The official transcript that your graduate institution sent directly to our Graduate School must show your final grade for any course you are using as a basis for an exemption from an Auburn course. The instructor can decide based on all of that evidence or can go a step further and give you an examination to determine your mastery of the material covered in the course from which you seek exemption. The instructor as well as the Program Director, the Major Professor and the Department Head must all sign a Department of Psychological Sciences Graduate Requirement Exemption form to document approval of the exemption. The form is available from Thane Bryant. If at the time the exemption is sought there is not a member of the department's faculty who normally teaches the required course, then the Program Director or his designee will fulfill the role of the “instructor” in this process.

In the case of the thesis, the Program Director, your Major Professor and the Department Head must all sign off on the exemption. The official transcript from your graduate degree-granting institution must show thesis coursework and must document conferral of the Master’s degree for that work.

Additional Information Regarding Transcripts: The transcript(s) referenced above must be sent directly from the issuing institution(s) to our Graduate School.  If you already had an official final transcript (showing that you completed the coursework or, in the case of a thesis, completed the thesis and received the Master’s degree) sent to the Graduate School during the application/admission process, then we will be able to access that online and you don’t need to provide another one. If that is not the case, then you need to have such a transcript sent directly from the institution to our Graduate School (Graduate School, Hargis Hall, Auburn University, AL  36849). Once our Graduate School has received it they will scan it and associate it with your admissions information and we will be able to view it online. When you order it, let me know (bryangt@auburn.edu) how long the issuing institution indicates it will take for our Graduate School to receive it so I will know when to start looking for it.