What is an articulation agreement?
The document that decides whether your classes count.
The plain-English version
An articulation agreement is an official map between two schools. It says, course by course, what a class at your community college turns into at the university. Your English class equals their English class. Your calculus counts for their calculus. No agreement entry, no guarantee.
What it actually tells you
For each course, the map gives one of three answers. It counts as a specific requirement at the university, which is what you want. It transfers as a general elective, credits that fill space but don't move your major forward. Or it doesn't transfer at all, and if your degree needs that material, you'll take it again at university prices.
Where to find yours
Three places. Your community college counselor, who works with these maps daily. The university's own transfer equivalency pages, most publish them publicly. And state systems, many of which run a shared database covering every public college in the state. The catch: agreements are pair-specific. The map between your college and one university says nothing about another, so if you change target schools, you check again from scratch.
Why this one document matters so much
Because it's the difference between graduating on time and paying twice. Students rarely lose money on tuition sticker prices; they lose it on classes that looked fine and quietly didn't count. Reading the agreement before you register, for every class, every term, is the single highest-value habit a transfer student can build.
Or let something else do the reading
TransferTrack checks your exact classes against your target schools automatically, so the agreement gets read every time without you hunting through PDFs. Join the waitlist, or keep going with do community college credits transfer?