On January 29th, the Academic Registry circulated an email notifying students that the procedure for applying for a transfer of course within the College had changed with approval from the University Council. The topic of transferring courses within College has been a topic of discussion for years now, with University Times publishing columns on the difficulties students have faced in attempting to transfer courses. Grievances had ranged from a lack of transparency to slow procedures described as “academic limbo”.
The University Council is a council established by the college and considered the “highest academic committee” including important actors such as the Provost who chairs the council, the Senior Lecturer, Academic Secretary, Vice Provost, and the Central Applications Office (CAO). It works to make recommendations and pass approvals on changes to the bureaucracy of Trinity, affecting students and staff alike. Their latest action was approving changes to the procedure of internal transfers.
Based on the new procedures, applying for transfers now involves the following: Junior Fresh students from the EU must apply via CAO with most courses’ deadlines ending on May 1st (some earlier); non-EU students in Junior Fresh must apply via their my.tcd.ie portal; Both EU and non-EU students of Senior Fresh and Junior Sophister must apply via Advanced Entry on my.tcd.ie; finally, newly entered JF students in their first term, continuing JF students, and non-JF students attempting to transfer back into JF must do so via an online form available to registered students.
Additionally, the entry requirements to transfer are as follows: EU students entering JF follow the same requirements as other CAO applicants; non-EU JF students must follow the entry requirements as other direct applicants applying on my.tcd.ie. The entry requirements for Advanced Entry transfer, ie EU and non-EU students’, is heavily dependent on both course credits, past examination results and availability. The three conditions for Advanced Entry are that applicants must have completed the entry requirements of the previous year in the course they are applying into, the quality of their previous third-level examination results as well as Leaving Cert results, and whether the course has space to accommodate a transfer.
The aspects of course transfer that have remained unchanged are the deadlines for reapplying for admissions which remains February 1st, reapplying for non-restricted CAO courses ends on May 1st, and the final day for course transfer applications for non-EU as well as all Advanced Entry students is June 30th.
Neither the email nor the College’s page on transfers notes changes to the timeline of receiving offers or transparency from the end of the Academic Registry but these changes were made with the intent of improving the quality of the process of transfers.
