I earned 44 college credits in NJ, will I be able to bring them California and get the next 16?

Does your school operate on semesters or trimesters? How about the school in California you’re looking at? If they don’t operate on the same schedule like that, you may lose some credits. I switched schools from Oregon (trimesters) to New York (semesters) and lost over half of my credits. But then this was at regular colleges as opposed to culinary school.

I suggest you call the school in California and speak to an academic advisor about it.

As a former guidance counselor, I’d say it would totally depend on what college you took the courses at in NJ, and what college you want to transfer them to. For example, Stanford will most likely not accept too many credits from, say, Camden County College. You would probably be able to get out of some lower level Bio courses if you had taken Biology 101, but it really depends on the college accepting the credits. For that, you have to visit the admissions website of the college you want to attend, or talk with an admissions/transfer officer there.

It depends on whether your former school has any kind of accreditation that your new school recognizes and whether your new school considers the teaching quality of the old school acceptable. And if you’re changing majors or the major at your new school is substantially different, your old courses may count as general credits but not credits towards the major.

The only people who can answer this are the people at your new school, and even then you may get different answers from different people. Call them up and talk to them, and make sure you get any answers in writing.