Transferring credits in Spain: how to change university or degree programme
You don't need to retake the entrance exam to change degree programme or university in Spain. Here's what you need to know about a traslado de expediente: what it requires, how it differs from regular admission, and why you should check your target university's deadline as early as possible.
Every summer, while thousands of students check their cutoff grade to enter university for the first time, another group — those who already started a degree and want to change — looks for a different route: the traslado de expediente. This is the procedure that lets you move your academic record from one degree programme or university to another, without having to apply from scratch as a new entrant through the standard admission process.
What it actually is
A traslado de expediente moves your academic record — the courses you've already taken and passed — from your current university or degree programme to the new one. It's different from credit recognition, which is the separate procedure that later decides how many of those already-passed courses also count towards the destination programme. You normally need to go through both: first the transfer, then the credit recognition.
The requirement that makes the difference: 30 credits
The usual academic requirement to apply for a traslado de expediente is having passed at least 30 basic-training credits of an official Spanish bachelor's degree (grado). Below that threshold, you would normally need to go through the general admission process again, using your EBAU admission grade, like any other applicant.
Changing degree isn't always the same as changing university
It's worth distinguishing two situations that sometimes get mixed up: switching to a different degree programme within the same university, and transferring to a different university altogether, which is where the traslado de expediente formally comes into play. Each university regulates its own procedure and deadlines independently, so the process — and especially the calendar — can look very different depending on the university you're coming from and the one you're moving to.
Deadlines vary enormously between universities
This is the part worth checking as early as possible: application deadlines aren't standardised nationally or even regionally, and some have already closed or are about to. As a sense of how uneven the calendar is this year: the University of Seville kept it open from 1 May to 31 July, the University of Valladolid closed it between 12 May and 22 June, Complutense University of Madrid had it open from 19 June to 10 July, and the University of Cantabria only from 29 June to 3 July. If you're thinking about applying for a transfer, the only reliable way not to miss the deadline is to check the destination university's own website directly, rather than going by what another university did.
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