Information for Crane Transfer Students

The SUNY Potsdam Admissions Office evaluates transcripts for non-music courses. Details on this process can be found on SUNY Potsdam's transfer student website. Get started by checking out our course equivalency tables. Just find your current higher education institution to see the SUNY Potsdam transfer guide for all classes. Typically, non-music courses will transfer without much fuss. Note that some general education requirements are fulfilled by required music courses in each music major. If you are transferring to Crane after completing an associate degree at a SUNY school; completion of the AS degree (and therefore completion of the general education requirements at a 2-year SUNY school) will fulfill SUNY Potsdam's general education requirements as per SUNY transfer rules. For others (such as a student planning on transferring to Crane after one year at another college), you may wish to focus on general education requirements that are not covered by music courses. That list will be major-dependent, but there are four general education requirements that have to be fulfilled through non-music courses for all music majors. They are the American History, Science (Natural World), Connecting to a language other than English, and Math requirements.

The Crane School of Music evaluates transcripts for music courses. Please note that in order to count, students must have received a grade of 2.0 (C) or better in courses required for the major.

Most music courses transfer without issues. For example, a college-level music history survey course taken elsewhere will count for the appropriate Music History course as long as the grade earned is at least a 2.0 (C). However, there are three important exceptions, detailed below. These are currently under revision, and so the text below may change. We are finalizing these 'rules' for those entering Crane in 2027, and will update this page as necessary. 

1. Applied Studio: Transfer students with college-level studio lesson credits taken prior to enrollment at the Crane School of Music will receive credit for up to two semesters of studio lessons, on a credit-by-credit equivalency basis. To qualify, these credits must have a grade of least a 3.0 (B). 

For transfer students who, at the end of the degree, have studio credits left to complete, and who have completed the performance requirements of their majors (all Level and Recital requirements), the remaining studio credits in their degree program can be resolved in one of two ways.

1. If the student has additional credits of studio taken prior to enrolling at Crane, and which did not initially transfer, the student can request to apply some or all of those credits. Typically, this is done no earlier than the semester before the student plans to graduate. In order to be eligible to be applied, courses need to have a grade of at least a 2.0 (C).
2. Students who do not have adequate credits of studio by transfer to cover all remaining degree requirements also have the option of applying to have credits waived or to request Credit by Examination in Applied Music (as any music student can do).

2. Keyboard Courses: Transfer students will have to test out of each semester of keyboard, regardless of how many semesters they have already taken. There are placement exams for each level of keyboard, with the first one offered the day before classes start each semester (so this is not part of your audition). Typically, transfer students will attempt to test out of the same number of keyboard courses they passed at their first college, but it is possible to test out of additional keyboard courses. In fact, all students may do so.

3. Music Theory and Aural Skills: Because we do not want to place students in a theory or aural skills class they are not prepared for, or give students credit for completing the two-year theory and aural skills curriculum without demonstrating the appropriate knowledge and skills (as Theory IV and Aural Skills IV are prerequisites for a number of upper-level courses), students must "show what they know" in these two areas. Transfer students have two options: either take a placement exam and accept placement based on that, or accept placement based on our default system:

Please note that Theory and Aural Skills classes must be on the same "level," as we teach these courses in an integrated manner.

Regarding the placement exam: the aural portion of the exam consists of several brief melodic and harmonic dictation examples, played three times each. The theory portion includes sections on fundamentals (scales, intervals, chord types), part-writing from a figured bass, identifying the tonal center of musical passages, form identification, and twentieth-century materials. The exam is not assigned a grade; rather, student responses are assessed in order to make the most appropriate placement. The exam will be given online about a week or two before the start each semester. There is a $20 fee for the exam, which is administered using software called Artusi.

A decision about which placement system a student wishes to use is made during advising over the summer (or in January for students entering in the spring semester).

This varies greatly from student to student, and depends on many factors. However, some generalizations are possible.

Music Education students who transfer into Crane after two years from a community college typically take three years at Crane to complete their degree. This is due to a number of factors. For example, students transferring from a community college have usually not started taking courses in music education. Additionally, many of the courses in music education are sequential, and some courses cannot be taken until other courses are completed. The semester of student teaching, when no other courses can be taken, impacts student timelines as well. Note that students completing the A.S. Performing Arts: Music degree program at SUNY Schenectady, and who take the appropriate music education coursework at Schenectady and meet other criteria of the transfer agreement between the two schools, are able to complete the B.M. in music education degree in a total of four years (2+2).

The situation is similar for the Bachelor of Music degree in Music Business. Coursework in music business is typically taken over a three-year period, and includes a semester off-campus for the capstone internship. We have an articulation agreement with SUNY Broome for this degree, making it possible for those who complete the A.S. in Music: Music Recording & Production emphasis at Broome to earn the B.M. in music business degree from Crane with two additional years of coursework plus the full-semester internship (which can be taken during the summer as well as the fall or spring semesters).

Bachelor of Science in Music Business students have similar outcomes to the BM in Music Business.

It is harder to generalize for our other Bachelor of Music degrees (Performance or the Musical Studies degrees), but it is also not unusual for these students to take 5 or 6 semesters at Crane in order to fulfill all the degree requirements. For Performance and Musical Studies-Composition majors, the level of their abilities coming into Crane and the rate of their progress here will be in an important factor in their timeline to graduation. 

Students with an A.S. in Music degree transferring into the Bachelor of Arts in Music degree face far fewer challenges than those in the Bachelor of Music majors, are more likely to be able to complete all degree requirements for the B.A. Music degree in four years total.

These generalizations assume the student has been majoring in music before entering Crane. If this is not the case, students should count on spending four years at Crane if they are planning to be in a Bachelor of Music program. The number of semesters of studio and ensemble in these degree programs typically require students to be in the music program for four years, and it is not possible to "double up" on these requirements. However, the Bachelor of Arts in Music degree only requires four semesters of studio and ensemble, so the situation is different with that degree. Likewise, completing the Bachelor of Science - Music Business major should take less than four years.    

Students transferring from four-year schools, and who remain in the same degree program they had been in prior to transferring to Crane are likely to complete their degree on time. Like music majors who start at Crane, the first-year classes for most music majors are extremely similar, so students transferring to Crane after one year in another college music program (at either a 2-year or 4-year school) typically can graduate on time, regardless of their degree program.

The Crane School of Music accepts excellent transfer students each year from a variety of two- and four-year colleges. Three SUNY community colleges account for the majority of our transfer students: SUNY Schenectady, SUNY Onondaga and Suffolk County Community College, but we also have students coming from SUNY Broome, Nassau, Finger Lakes, Jamestown, Niagara, Ulster, Monroe, Orange County, Jefferson Community Colleges as well as others. There are, of course, many other institutions that we receive fine transfer students from, including a variety of four-year schools.