Advice for Prospective Transfer Students

Meeting our lower-division requirements at your current college or university is straightforward. You should consult our degree curriculum in the Cal Poly Catalog, which you can find here.  A downloadable curriculum sheet can be found here. You can also find a transfer student two-year degree flowchart here. 

The Philosophy BA at Cal Poly has the following lower-division requirements:

• PHIL 101 Introduction to Philosophy
• PHIL 126 Logic and Argumentative Writing (GE area A3)
• PHIL 230 Philosophical Classics: Knowledge and Reality (GE area C2)
• PHIL 231 Philosophical Classics: Ethics and Political Philosophy (GE area C2)
• PHIL 241 Symbolic Logic

To be fully prepared to transfer to Cal Poly as a philosophy major, you should complete the standard requirements for transfer into the CSU. Doing so will satisfy the lower-division General Education requirements, including a critical reasoning course that will satisfy GE area A3 and count as our PHIL 126. You will also satisfy GE area C2.

To meet our lower-division major requirements, you should make sure that in addition to a critical thinking course, you take at least four other philosophy courses at your college or university. You should take a symbolic logic course to count as our PHIL 241.You should also take three more philosophy courses in any of the following categories:

• Introduction to philosophy
• Ethics
• Contemporary moral problems
• Philosophy of religion
• History of philosophy courses
• Political philosophy

Other philosophy courses might also count, but courses specifically on religion won’t count. We will use those three philosophy courses to meet the following requirements for our major:

• PHIL 101
• PHIL 230
• PHIL 231

With five lower-division philosophy courses completed at your current college or university, you are ready to take our upper-division courses in your first quarter at Cal Poly. If you are short on any of those requirements, you would then need to take enough lower-division coursework in your first quarter at Cal Poly to complete your lower-division requirements. The two-year transfer flowchart graphically displays these requirements and suggests the terms when you should complete your remaining requirements.