The University System of Georgia sets minimum GPA requirements for college transfers among its institutions that differ based upon the institution’s classification.

The state groups its institutions into four classifications: research universities, comprehensive universities, state universities, and state colleges. For the three types of universities, the college transfer requirements consist of minimum grade-point-average (GPA) thresholds that apply for students with at least 30 transferrable credits.

This report studies how these minimum GPA requirements affect student transfers within the system. Our analysis finds that, in many cases, these GPA requirements can influence college transfer patterns.

The report uses administrative records from the USG gathered between 2007 and 2019 to study how the minimum GPA requirements affect transfers within the system. It examines the characteristics of students who transfer.

It also investigates how transfer patterns in the short and long run vary with students’ 30-credit-hour GPAs, focusing on differences among students who are just above and just below the minimum GPA thresholds—making them barely eligible or ineligible to transfer to a given institution at that point in time.

Finally, the report assesses how the impacts of these requirements differ across students of different characteristics and institution types.

These effects are most apparent for the minimum GPA (3.2) required to transfer to the University of Georgia. Students with a GPA just above the 3.2 minimum at 30 credits are three times as likely to transfer to the University of Georgia within one year compared to students with a GPA just below 3.2.

The minimum college transfer GPA requirements, however, have a more distinct effect on the timing of when students transfer as opposed to whether students ever transfer to a particular institution.

The report concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of these findings.