The requirements set out regarding articulation agreements depend on the individual rules of each college. For example, if a student is studying at Montgomery College and wishes to move to another college to take an alternate program, the type of program taken at Montgomery would be the main factor regarding how easy it would be for the student to transfer. If a student is pursuing an associate degree in business at Montgomery, it would be possible to transfer to a master's program at Johns Hopkins or UMUC (University of Maryland University College) without any trouble.
Not all articulation agreements are as simple -- most of the time, the student would have to meet a variety of criteria in order to fully qualify for a transfer. Students who wish to transfer to a college like Stanford have to meet a number of conditions in order to be eligible for transfer. The student would have to already be doing a course at another university (a course that would have offered an honours degree at the end) and completed at least a full year of the course. These requirements are very specific (college courses taken while in high school and exam credit don't count towards this).
Other requirements that have to be met in order to qualify for articulation agreement transfers include the completion of all coursework due for the year(s) spent at other colleges. Another requirement involves meeting this objective with enough time to also meet the degree timing qualifications. Some colleges will give a student a degree only if the student spends the minimum amount of studying time enrolled at that college. So if the requirements for the qualification of a degree are two years, the student must be accepted in the agreement in time to take a two year course at the new college.
Certain personal conditions are also taken into consideration when deciding if a student qualifies for an articulation agreement transfer. As mentioned above, the degree of transferability between the two courses is important (a student couldn't transfer from doing art history to economics due to the low level of transferability). The grades received from the initial college for coursework and other assignments and the originality of that coursework are also important factors.