2024-2025 Graduate Bulletin > Policies and General Information > Academic Policies and Information > Credit by Examination

Credit by Examination

A student who has been admitted to a graduate degree program and who has had experience or background comparable to a course at this university may file for a maximum of 12 semester hours of Credit by Examination, at the discretion of the department, under the following conditions:

1. No credit eligible for transfer to CMU has been earned in the course requested by examination.
2. No higher level course in that subject area was taken prior to requesting credit by examination (A higher level course is a course that is higher at the 100-level. For example, a 700-level course is higher than a 600-level course, but multiple courses at the 600-level are considered to be at the same level.).
3. Credit by examination may not be used to repeat any course previously taken that has not expired, either to remove a failure or to improve a grade, as provided in the Repeat Course Policy.
4. Graduate credit by examination is available as Credit/No Credit only, and is not included in the computation of the student's grade point average.
5. Graduate credit by examination may be used to repeat any course previously taken at CMU or at another institution that has expired as described in the Time to Complete Policy.

At the time of the request, the student must have an Authorization of Degree Program signed by the advisor on file in Applications Processing. Approval may be granted for the number of credits requested or any portion of the credits requested. The student should submit the signed application for credit by examination to the Registrar's Office to register for the number of credits approved. The Credit by Examination Request form may be found on the Graduate Studies website.

(Approved by the Graduate Committee, October 11, 2017)