<p>Understood, blossom- there are always two sides to every story. That said, if half of the story about being notified 2 days before graduation, or the one about the LAC needing the permanent transcript from the BigStateU for a class they didnt offer, when they were given the unofficial transcript and written confirmation from the BigStateU are correct, that seems really yukky.</p>
<p>My company no longer accepts unofficial transcripts and written confirmation from any university as proof of graduation. We’ve hired new grads with “just one incomplete” or a few “w”'s which were never fixed, or one kid who claimed he had a library fine which he couldn’t afford to pay. We don’t care the reason- you are either graduated from the institution which is listed on your resume or not, and if you claim you graduated but you didn’t we are going to terminate you.</p>
<p>When you are stopped for speeding, the cop doesn’t accept a letter from the DMV that you studied all the material in the handbook as proof that you passed your driving test. When you sell a house, the bank doesn’t accept your statement that you don’t owe your plumber any money or that you are up to date on your property taxes. You are required to produce a driver’s license (big bureaucratic headache, that one) and the bank does a title search to make sure there are no liens on the property (big bureaucracy AND cost there.)</p>
<p>That’s the way it is, kids. Sometimes you need an official document when your own word and an easy to fake xerox or photoshop piece of paper are not sufficient.
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<p>It happens in high school all of the time; kids fail a regents/RCT required for graduation, kids don’t complete final projects or credit recovery courses and don’t meet the requirements for graduation. Rating day is this year is on Friday 6/21. Some NYS public schools have graduation on Friday evening 6/21, but most will have them the following week up until the last day of school on 6/26. It is not unusual to have to inform a family days before graduation that a child did not graduate, especially if testing was needed for graduation.</p>
<p>I remember when students used to be able to attend graduation, attend summer school and get their diploma in august. Kids began telling lies by omission and not telling parents that they forgot to pick up the diploma, the office was closed, ever really disclosing that they did not graduate. We would call homes (no answer) send registered letters home, kids caught the mail and parents never knew the kid did to graduate. We have had kids show up in their cap and gown, slip in to the processional, and walk with the graduates.</p>
<p>One year, it became very messy when parents came to school over the summer or in the fall to pick up the “forgotten” diplomas only to find out that dear little Egbert did not graduate. </p>
<p>I remember a really bad scene where the parents carried on saying that they know their child graduated because they were at the ceremony, grandparents flew in , there was a big party, etc.</p>
<p>Now the NYCDOE implemented a no walk policy, which means unless your child is getting a diploma on the last day of school, they cannot participate in graduation. For our school, this mean no distribution of caps and gowns or no tickets unless you are getting a diploma. The night before graduation, we are usually at school until 8/9 pm because someone is always coming in crying, and yelling about how they have to attend graduation. We just inform them that they can attend the borough wide ceremonies in August.</p>
<p>Great comment, blossom! That is life.</p>
<p>Well, I can certainly understand about the NYC graduation issues, and although rules are rules, I personally find the situation as described by the OP unsatisfactory, and not analogous to NYC public school graduation. Many of the LACs have a graduating class of 500 or so (big ones maybe 800), not thousands. I would think the Deans etc. have an opportunity to actually know many students. Many of the LACs want their reputation to be one of personal attention, you won’t slip through the cracks, yada yada. Some of the universities have this reputation too, but let’s defer that for a moment. We visited quite a few LACs and were strongly pushed in that direction by my kid’s HS advising personnel. Every place told us our kid would get to know professors personally etc. Some had a chillier vibe in terms of requirements etc., and others seemed as though they would be more “chill” (as my kid says). </p>
<p>In terms of the universities, it seems that some also have a reputation of letting people have quite a bit of leeway and going all out to help people to graduate despite problems academic or otherwise. Maybe the reputations are true, and maybe for each good story there is a corresponding bad one that we never heard of. </p>
<p>I personally ran into a problem in my undergraduate college, I think I have told it on CC before, where a nice assistant dean, who I never met before, interceded with a professor. There actually was a dispute as to the legality of being allowed to drop a course, in the professor’s opinion. The dean told me that he could refuse, but ultimately, he did not. In my division you could drop for 8 weeks, but in his division, you could drop for 3. Since I was not in his division, the 3 week rule should not have applied to me (dropping a course was really not to be guided by the division of the course but the division the student was enrolled in). Nevertheless, the dean said he could refuse to sign, and the signature was necessary in order to drop. It would not have held up my graduation, as the credits were an elective, and I had extra credits, but a big fat F on my law school applications would not have looked too nice. I think my college has a reputation of being fairly rigid and unhelpful, but other than the hour or two of total aggravation that I experienced, I couldn’t have asked for better attention to my problem. The professor had a reputation of being a wonderful person, loved by many, but apparently disliked intensely by a few who he steamrolled for no apparent reason, other than the fact that he could. Yes, you might ask what I did wrong. I had never spoken to the guy before he refused to sign the drop, and he stated that he would not let a student fail an exam and then try to drop the course. I told him that I didn’t fail the exam - I never even took it. I had decided that I did not like the course, didn’t need it, and did not want to spend time working on it, but he never even let me say this. He yelled at me to get out of his office. This was a course of hundreds of students in, get this, wine tasting (two credits, but pass fail only for grading). I still think that my university gives off the feeling of being huge and impersonal, which it can be, but in my own case, when I needed help, it couldn’t have been delivered faster or more effectively. I did have to ask for it, though.</p>
<p>Any updates on this, now that it’s January?</p>