When a community college is the economical first step toward a bachelor’s degree, an articulation agreement is often the key to getting to Step 2.

These agreements, which spell out what it takes to transfer to four-year institutions in the same area, are often complicated and murky. Some states, including Florida, California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia, guarantee that anyone who earns an associate degree in the state will also earn admission as a junior to a state university. Many students are on their own, however.

And they all too often find that courses do not transfer or will not apply toward a major, slowing down the march toward a degree and adding to its cost. The National Center for Education Statistics reported in 2011 that 37 percent of community college students plan to complete a bachelor’s, but only 12 percent actually do.

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“The ladder between two-year and four-year schools is often very weak,” says Anthony P. Carnevale, director of Georgetown University‘s Center on Education and the Workforce. He advises anyone who plans to use community college as a steppingstone to a particular university to first find out from the four-year college which schools it has articulation agreements with.

Ask, too, if other students have climbed that particular ladder. If the answer is “two in the last 10 years,” go find another community college, Carnevale says.

It’s also vital to read any agreement carefully, says Anthony Ervin, an academic adviser in the Biomanufacturing Research Institute and Technology Enterprise program at North Carolina Central University.

His advice: Don’t assume anything — ask upfront. What classes will transfer for full credit? The content of the course work needs to measure up. It’s entirely possible, says Ervin, to take general chemistry in community college only to find that the class does not fulfill the general chemistry requirement at your chosen four-year school.

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And most public universities require a minimum grade of “C” to transfer credits. In 2012, the College Board’s Initiative on Transfer Policy and Practice recommended that four-year colleges create more transparent transfer policies and establish a presence on the community college campus to help guide transfers.

Meantime, FinAid.org, a website that offers comprehensive information about financial aid, also lists articulation agreements by state. And many states have created their own websites that provide background on articulation agreements and the transfer process.

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Some universities also publicize the information. At Central Michigan University‘s site, for example, you can see which courses meet its requirements both by community college and by degree program.

Someone attending Henry Ford Community College in the biomedical sciences who wants to transfer to CMU later, for example, can see that Bio 251, a microbiology course, will count as CMU’s Bio 208. If community college is a moneysaving move, such research upfront on a planned transfer is apt to be a worthwhile investment.

This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Colleges 2015” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.

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Do Your Research Before Transferring From Community College originally appeared on usnews.com