During my senior year of high school I was allowed to attend a community college because I had all of the courses required to graduate. I graduated high school with a 2.8 and received a 2.6 from the community college in 2010. I then went to a local college for three semesters where I did not do so well. After being placed on academic probation and being told to come back the following semester I decided to join the Air Force and I have been in for about 21 months. I now think I am ready to ready to return to college to further my career but the poor gpa is coming back to haunt me, was thinking about taking the online electrical engineering program at ASU. I was told I could raise it by going to a community colleges for a year or two but are there any other options such as taking online courses at an accredited institution as a non-degree seeking student. I also have a couple of quick questions.
Would I send transcripts from every institution I have attended to ASU or just my most recent
If ASU wants transcripts from every institution attended do they just average all the gpa's.
If they don't want transcripts from every institution would my gpa/transcripts and credits have to be funneled through each subsequent college I attend.
Whenever you apply for admission to a degree program at an accredited college or university in the US, you have to send official copies of all of your transcripts. Period. What they make of those grades is up to them.
Now for the good news: Good new academic records count more than bad old ones. You won’t be the first transfer applicant to ASU who had bad grades the first time around, then went into military service, got their act together, and started to get good grades. There are lots of people out there like you, and the colleges and universities know it.
UMUC also offers some live classes on or near bases around the world. Check with the people where you are stationed, and find out if there are other local options as well.
With that low a GPA, I can’t believe they didn’t make you retake any Ds or Fs in HS.
Anyway, NO college has a right to send a transcript that they received from any other college, with the exception of if they accepted a course for transfer credit. And if they did that, they would add it to your transcript and it would be a good enough grade, usually C or higher, to get credit.
It is bull that you have to send all your transcripts to a college you apply to. I did NOT send all my transcripts to colleges I applied to. Where is it a “rule”?
Also, if you are active military, many colleges will bend over backwards to help you get an education. Make sure you are availing yourself of those resources.
What I suggest is that you contact ASU and see which community colleges they accept credits from, and make sure you go to one on the list.
It’s one of ASU’s requirements for admission. There’s a national clearing house colleges can check for these records and schools can rescind acceptances and revoke degrees if students lie to them on applications. Leaving colleges off the list of previously attended schools and then attesting that the information is complete and accurate counts as a lie. Maybe when you went to college there weren’t methods available to check student records like we have now, and I can understand if you don’t like the system that is currently in place, but those aren’t reasons to encourage a student to do something which could have enormous negative consequences.
I would suggest looking into alternatives before you go the online route. Such as finishing up the lower-division classes at a community college so that you can apply to be a junior xfer when you leave the Air Force. A couple of reasons.
First off, engineering is a tough major. It is helpful to be able to talk to TAs, attend review sessions the TAs and profs hold, work with other students on problem sets or to review for tests, use the resources of the campus, etc. in ways that are just not going to be possible online sitting in your room. I would be very impressed if someone could learn just as much in a tough major like EE doing the classes online, but somehow I doubt it happens. And if I understand you right you are going to do this while simultaneously holding down your full-time Air Force assignment?
Second, given your academic past, I’m sure you want to do better this time around but I wonder if going it alone is the best way. Having some friends going thru it with you is good motivation and help. If you were telling a friend about how to start an exercise program, would you tell them to join a gym and start running on their own, or would you suggest they find a few friends and commit to doing it together? Engineering and science majors are even worse, in a way, because if you slack of exercising you can always get back on track but if you fall behind for a few weeks in math or EE then the game is probably over; you’ll just never be able to get back to where everyone else is, so you’ll find the new material frustrating and it will just keep coming.
Third, ASU is of course going to assure you the online degree is “just the same” as the in-person one, but I wonder about that. At home you can’t duplicate the labs and all their equipment they have. Employers these days also value team skills, which is why many lab assignments are going to be set up as small teams. Even if they try to do this online, it just isn’t going to be the same as the experience of those attending college and taking the class.
My advice would be to step back into college by taking math & science classes at a CC, along with those needed to satisfy breadth requirements so you can enter college as a junior. When your enlistment is up use your college benefits from the military to attend 2 years full-time at a college.
@rhandco - Some colleges and universities will not require all transcripts until a student becomes a degree candidate. So yes, a student might be admitted in non-degree status, but when there is an audit of the files, if something is missing, the student will not be able to qualify for degree candidacy (or will be removed from degree candidacy) until the transcript issue is resolved. Each place sets its own policy about this. Some will accept the missing transcripts. Some will just kick the student out.
CC transcript, if you are transferring all the credits to the 4-year college, yes.
Anything else, no.
OP apparently is worried about low GPA previously, but ASU says 2.0 or higher is good enough. If three semesters of local college were less than 2.0, I do not know why the OP would report them and I do see that ASU lists 2.5 GPA required elsewhere: https://transfer.asu.edu/transferrequirements
So for post #6, are you saying that all transcripts from all college previous to the current college would be required. That is totally not my experience at the several universities I attended. My most recent college in two cases was community college, and I did not note them at all on my application nor did I provide a transcript.
I’m also confused with what the OP said. You can’t “raise your GPA” at the local college by going to a CC. If you provide your local college transcript, it is independent.
All they really want is proof of an associate’s degree, with a 2.5 GPA or higher if not an Arizona resident. No additional college needed.
Maybe because ASU says this? **For your transfer application to be processed, you must request official transcripts to be sent directly to ASU from all schools you have attended. **
I don’t know why you keep advising this applicant to jeopardize his future by ignoring the rules and knowingly submitting a false application. At the bottom of every app is going to be something to the effect that what they have submitted is true and complete. Failure to do so is easily caught if a college chooses to check.
Many community colleges will not require previous transcripts if you are just enrolling to take a couple of classes. Formally, should you become a degree candidate, you would need to provide all of your previous transcripts. This is not about being mean to you about previous bad grades. It is about the various accredited colleges and universities in the country playing nice with each other.
If a student applies for federally determined financial aid, then yes it is all but certain any missed transcripts will be found out. The colleges/universities have to use the federal databases to determine if the student has any remaining eligibility for that aid.
I ran afoul of this once myself because of a 30 year old transcript for a six credit summer course that was missing from my file. Fortunately, the grad school I was enrolled in at the time accepted that I’d just forgotten to send it, and re-instated me as soon as it arrived.
You need to send in transcripts from every college where you enrolled in courses, even if it was one course, and even if it was a W. Failure to do so can result in immediate expulsion. If you have financial aid, you may be forced to pay it back as you falsified your application. These transcripts are not sent by the current college or CC, but must be specifically requested from, and sent by, the college where the courses were taken.
If the applicant has Ds and Fs he should look into that college’s rules for Academic Renewal. The low grades may be able to be replaced by AR, but it takes varying degrees of time. There is also the retake option, if viable. Additionally, very old transcripts, say 8-10 years ago, may be forgiven (in other words, not calculated by the college you are applying to), but you need to find out their policy.
Any way you cut it, though, you need to send in every transcript from every college ever attended.
As someone noted, a simple search of the National Student Clearinghouse will bring up all colleges attended.