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I have been admitted to University of Texas at Dallas for Master's in Computer Science program and have joined in Spring. Although, I want to have second opinion and was wondering if it's possible to transfer my school. I have some queries in the same regard:-
Any help would be really appreciated.
It isn't usually possible to "transfer" to another school, but you could always apply to a different program and terminate your current program. In this case, to answer your questions:
Yes, you will need to apply to any new schools you'd like to consider. They are independent institutions, so they need to evaluate you according to their own standards.
You will have to ask the school you apply to how they will take transfer credits. There is often a credit limit, and you might need to take an exam or by some other method prove your competency.
Note that you may need to provide reasoning for why you are switching programs when you apply to an alternate program. It may be harder to get into a program given this -- schools may not want to take a risk on a student that quickly exited out of another program.
I don't know the US educational system, but I guess that it would depend on the two institutions.
In several countries you can apply for transfer admission and also for transfer the credits you have completed to other institution. However, the institution must have classes that are equivalents to the ones you took in the previous university. For example, here in my university you could have equivalence between two classes if there are at least 75% of content overlap between them, among other factors. The application for equivalence is judged by a professor from the department where the degree you want to pursue is offered.
Here in Europe we have the Bologna Process and the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) to facilitate this kind of process.
You may check the specific policy of the university you want to go and the convention in the US educational system. As I can see here, is very common the transference from/to community colleges in order to save money, so this is not so odd in the US too.
Be aware that, in general, you always lost some credits when transferring to another institution due to different structures of the courses.
