College screwed up, senior now being told he's 6 credits short to graduate - Help!

Maybe it is different at a state flagship but there is software that students can log into anytime to run a Degree Audit Report at UW-Madison for current or proposed majors. Student receives an immediate report showing all classes taken to date, plus current classes, and requirements met, yet to be fulfilled, and what is needed to fulfill them.

I think most schools have Degree Audit on line now for students. I’ll go out on a helicopter limb here and suggest that parents might consider getting their student to look at it with them, if you’re not sure the student is following it closely. Obviously, it’s the student’s job, but these stories show why another pair of eyes is not a bad thing. They are usually pretty straightforward documents, but if there is an error, like for instance Mainelonghorn pointed out, the student might not be aware of the problem.

I worked as a college advisor for many years, and the online DA is a great tool for students, but only if they look at it and understand what they need to understand…

OP - glad it’s all (mostly) working out. For summer housing tell your son to start looking for a sublet if landlords in your area allow it. At my D’s school, FB pages and off campus housing pages/college newspaper classified are full of kids looking for someone to sublet in the summer.

Great outcome, honestmom!

Our son plans to walk in May, although with another class to take before his degreec is conferred. His school lets you walk if you have about 12 credits you can fill before the fall. We thought it would be an extra semester, so an extra class seems like nothing.

Would be great if it allowed for an internship or co-op while still considered a student.

I know it’s a little mean to ask this, and I’m only half serious, but . . . Why shouldn’t we see it as a bona fide college graduation requirement that students read the 4-5 paragraphs (or however many there are) in the course catalog for their college that explain general graduation requirements and the page that explains the requirements for their majors, and take responsibility for making certain they qualify? I know advisors can screw up. What should we really think of a college age kid who gets fooled by a graduate-assistant advisor who is screwing up? Everyone should do better. However, I am just not sympathetic with the idea that college students shouldn’t have to understand graduation requirements on their own, or that others are to blame when they suddenly find in their senior year that they are short in some area.

I have something of the same feeling about college applicants. There are many, many times I want to post something like “Why should you be admitted to Stanford if you can’t find the page on the website that explains in 8th-grade English exactly what you are supposed to do, and do it?”

Perhaps it may be that there is a lot of hand-holding in high school, and more helicopter parenting than there used to be (see the thread on how non-helicopter parenting may actually get the police and child-protective-services called on parents), so the switch to looking up and doing things oneself is rougher on college students these days.

It just seems like one quality employers and graduate schools should be looking for in any college graduate, and have a right to expect, is the ability to find, to understand, and to comply with a set of rules at the complexity level of college curriculum requirements, without help from parents, and without requiring guidance from others except in legitimate situations where the rules are not clear.

When I was in college, I talked with my advisors about which courses were best for my intellectual development. Graduation requirements were my responsibility, and I knew how I was going to meet them by the time I chose a major. I probably had to submit a plan sometime in my junior year, but it was such a nonevent I don’t remember it.

@JHS, in our case S switched majors and the school screwed up in transferring some credits between programs. He kept asking and his advisor kept assuring him that he was on track, because the credits were put into the computer program incorrectly by the registrar once he changed his major and the advisor just didn’t catch it. There was another screwup of a junior year requirement that is unique to this college and too complicated to even explain here, that might have been my son’s fault but I don’t think it was. So he has to go back and take a junior class this spring and that pushes back another gen-ed to the summer. Kind of a unique situation as far as I can tell. As I said, the college did admit fault and waived one gen-ed class but would not waive two, and we understood that.

The college does have an August commencement, and it is actually a better time for us to travel than May since the school is 800 miles away from our home and our D is still in high school in May. They do let unfinished students walk in the May commencement if they want, but we all agreed that we would wait until August. That was a minor thing to us, the big thing was the bomb being dropped on us so late in the senior year, and the cost of the extra hours.

The lesson to learn is that it is best to get as close to the primary source as possible for things like this. I.e. read the degree audit web page oneself instead of asking someone else to read it and report what it says.

I thought advisors (especially freshman year) were best at things like - “I know you want to dive into your major, but it’s good to start taking care of Gen Eds sooner rather than later as well.” or “You know, you’ve got three courses with heavy reading and everything due at the end of the semester, you might want to take a math or language course that spreads the load out more.” Or “you might not want to sign up for four full year courses and have no choices next semester.” Or “X is such a terrific professor, you might want to consider taking his course even though you don’t think you have any interest in Greek literature.” In my experience advisors never had a clue what the graduation requirements were! I was very lucky - I put off taking a full year course that was only offered one semester my senior year - they just waived the requirement.

@ucbalumnus This was our first college experience so we were a little naive about all the requirements and the need to make sure our student was keeping track of his requirements. I asked S a lot of questions when he switched majors but accepted his assurances that everything was fine. Of course in retrospect that was a bad idea. We didn’'t even know about the DegreeTracker program or know how to access it. (As it turns out, parents can’t access it unless they have their student’s ID and password to get in to their network.) Once I was able to find it I still couldnt make heads or tails out of it anyway though. Í had fthe sheet that described the required classes and was checking them off as my S went along but I did get a little lost when he switched majors.

@mathom One of the big selling points of this college is the hands-on advising from real faculty about keeping up with your requirements. My S’s major did not allow a lot of electives or flexibility about timing of classes. He met with his advisor every semester, in fact it was required before he could even register for the next semester’s classes. Things just went off the rails when he switched majors. It happens.

We will not make these mistakes with our D who will start next fall. She is hoping to go to Drexel, which has a complicated quarter system and coop semesters, so it will be even more challenging. At least now I know what to watch out for and do better.

I’m thinking that the Degree Audit program that OP’s sons college uses is not the one that both my sons college and the one I go to use (DegreeWorks). It clearly spells out what requirements are left and we can go in and do what if’s Like what if I I changed majors or added a minor . If OP had trouble figuring it out then it doesn’t sound like the program they are using is very user friendly. Hopefully the college her DD is going to will have a better Audit program.

Check here: https://clep.collegeboard.org/exam

Then go search for his school at the www.collegeboard.org site and click on the applying to link and see which CLEP Exams that school accepts.

If he needs specific credits then cross your fingers and hope they have CLEP exams for those courses and if he just needs “6 credits” then obviously get that in writing and then have him test out of 6 credit hours of the easiest garbage you can find and hire him a tutor just for good measure.

Also, someone said something about taking 20 credits. My brother did that and it didn’t work out well for him so please don’t.

He can probably walk the graduation and take the units during the summer.

Just because 20 credits didn’t work for someone’s brother doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.

Saintfan, did the UW still have the swimming requirement for graduation?

I agree that it is the students respnsibility, but when their advisors arent there as back up, mistakes happen.
From when my youngest began college, the major she was planning on was dropped by the university & to change majors required different prerequisites. They allowed her to take pre req classes and upper division classes consecutively, but it did take a little longer.

If it is any 6 credits, one may even take it at Community College in evening, Spring, or Summer. However, quite oven they may require some in 300 level, then you will have to take it the regular way. My D’s school has a tracker online where she finds her unofficial transcript too. It shows the general graduation requirement and what she has already fulfilled or not. What is not shown is the program/major specific requirement.

The problem with those degree tracker programs is they are only as good as the data that are put into them. Our problem happened because the registrar did not correctly transfer credits into the new major when he switched majors, and instead they converted to elective credits. It’s a very difficult program to understand. Transcripts only list the courses taken and do not track the graduation requirements.

I think that if any of us spent a semester working as a student advisor, we’d soon understand how mistakes can happen that are not the fault of the student.

My daughter did this job for two semesters as a grad assistant. Oh my, the stories of mistakes that she’d tell me about. I had to feel bad for some of the students! Of course, the students in some cases were partly to blame, but ther e were plenty of cases when it really was the school that was at fault.