Most of the time, general credits (english, etc) will be candidates for transfer. It really varries on if an advanced course will transfer.

Will the college offering the BA accept the credits from the school that gave you the AA? You need to talk to the school you plan to attend to see what the situation is.

Not all schools will accept credits earned at another university. Most will look to see how well qualified the other school is.

Sometimes they will accept some credits and reject others. Sometimes they will say that the quality of the AA program is not as stringent as their requirements and they will credit you for a lesser general class rather than the specific one. They might give you credit for a 100 level class instead of a 200 level one.

It all comes down to what the 4 year school will accept. In the best case, you’d come into the 4 year school as a junior but you may have a number of required classes facing you.

You could find out that the 4 year school you want will not accept many credits at all from your AA. If you check into this now you’ll have time to find another 4 year school that will accept them. Of course if most of the AA credits are rejected, then you have to wonder about the quality of the school offering the AA. So it might be really really good to check this out and find if you need to go to a different school for the AA to get a quality education.

How do you check this? Call the admissions office for the 4 year school and set up an appointment to talk to an admissions advisor. They will also help you choose the classes at the AA school which will transfer. Working with them now also gives you a leg up on getting accepted when the time comes.

If the school you’re transferring to accepts all of the credit from your AA (they don’t have to but most will accept most), then you will have about 2 years left for the BA/BS.

This depends on your major though. One thing they forget to mention when advisers suggest going to the community college first is that some majors have very specific sequence of courses and some of those sequences are 6 or more semesters long. That is, they require you to take class 1 before class 2 and class 2 before class 3 and there are 6 classes. 6 semesters is three years. This will depend on your major.

You should expect that most of your AA will transfer (if it was an academic/transfer AA and not vocational) and that you’ll be off by about 1 semester. So you have 2 – 2 1/2 years to go for your BA.

Some schools, like all of the State-sponsered Universities in Arizona (Arizona State, Northern Arizona, and University of Arizona) have an articulation agreement with most of the community colleges in the state that makes it explicitly clear what classes at what college transfer for what credit at each university.

Additionally, some universities may have an arrangement with community colleges that allows blocks of courses to be accepted . Once again, the Arizona system has specific arrangements (“If you take these classes, we will accept the credits and consider you a Junior for Bachelor’s in X.”), a blanket acceptance block (“Complete 35 credit hours containing these classes and we will accept all of them.”), and an agreement regarding Associate’s (“If you get an Associate’s from these colleges with this block of 35 credits and a 2.0+ GPA, we’ll admit you regardless of high school grades, SAT’s, etc.”).

I want to say the Colorado system is similar. The Alaska system has a system where the 4-year universities have satellite campuses that might award Associate’s and the 4-years have an Associate’s as an option.

So, check with your planned university and see if they have a similar system. If they do, you can probably complete your Bachelor’s in 4 years including your Associate’s. For me personally, I’m on the 5-year plan because I changed major’s twice and have two minor’s…