<p>I have a quick question and could use the judgement of you guys/gals. I'm applying to graduate schools in aerospace engineering. Many of the grad schools that I'm applying to ask for "transcripts from ALL colleges or universities attended." Now, I remained at the same college for my entire undergrad degree so obviously I sent my transcripts from that college. However, I also took one random "Advanced Writing" course 3 years ago at a different college to fulfill one of my university requirements. This course was hardly relevant to my degree and certainly not relevant to aero engineering. So my question is: do I need to send my transcripts for this ONE class since I took it at a different college?? </p>
<p>My original plan was to not worry about it but with the deadlines approaching I thought I'd get a second opinion. I really don't want to send this extra transcript because it would cost a lot of money since I'm applying to many different grad schools. Moreover, with deadlines approaching I'd have to your a quicker delivery method, costing me even more. Any help or experience with is would be greatly appreciated. </p>
<p>You could call the schools you’re applying to and ask if they need to see the official transcript or if an unofficial copy is enough. Generally, though, the requirement is an official transcript for any college you attended, no matter how few credits you accumulated.</p>
<p>All transcripts generally means all transcripts. If they didn’t want all of them, they’d tell you. Stanford, for example, only asked for transcripts from institutions that we had attended for at least one academic year. </p>
<p>Another question: when applications ask for your academic history, did you indicate that you were enrolled at another college for (I assume) a summer? If you did, your application might be marked as incomplete without that transcript. If you did not and the grad school notices, you could (worst case) get kicked out for academic fraud. </p>
<p>If you want to save the money, you could call and ask. But do not assume that it’s okay not to send the transcript.</p>
<p>I was almost booted out of a graduate level certificate program (not even a full Master’s degree program mind you) when a routine audit of the student files found transferred credits on my nearly 30 year old undergraduate transcript that weren’t backed up by an official transcript for that 30 year old summer class. </p>
<p>While I was in the process of sorting everything out, I learned that once you are a degree candidate at an accredited college or university in the US, that institution’s registrar’s office is obligated to have official copies of all of your college/university transcripts in your file. Some won’t insist on an official one at application time, but they will once you enroll. When the institution is up for re-accreditation, the team will pull random files and look for this kind of stuff. Missing papers can be cause for a delay in re-accreditation, which means that the college/university you apply to would much rather not admit you (or kick you out later on or even cancel your degree) than risk issues in the accreditation process. It really is more about these institutions all playing nice with each other than it is about any of us.</p>
<p>Spend the money. Send the transcripts. Save yourself a huge headache.</p>
<p>@happymomof1: That’s quite crazy. What I’m a bit puzzled by is why nobody made a fuss when first giving you an offer of admission and/or when they were processing your statement to register as a student. I’m sure you would have happily sent in the required materials if it were made clear that they’re missing.</p>
<p>Schools don’t even necessarily confirm receipt of materials like transcripts when you’re applying, so I’d imagine there is some way they should actually check that you’re good to go? Or some way you should be able to check you are good to go?</p>
<p>The thing is that quite often, those who review the application aren’t interested in these types of things quite the same way the officials keeping track of the nitty gritty (as opposed to the strength of the applicant) are. Even if those individuals aren’t to be blamed for giving an offer of admission before official paperwork is checked (for instance it has been mentioned that sometimes decisions are made prior to asking for official transcripts), I would have imagined someone else will say something.</p>
<p>Your best option for saving money is to check which schools require official transcripts mailed in as part of the application deadline. Many will explicitly ask you to refrain from sending such official reports in until an offer is given. At such schools, a “random class” is almost certainly not going to make a difference in your decision.</p>
<p>The problem is often when the graduate school processes applications and then forwards certain ones to the specific department. As was hinted, if they decide to, they could conceivably not approve your file to be considered.</p>
<p>Of course, this isn’t going to help you save if you’ve already decided on applying to a huge list of schools which all want official transcripts from the start. Judging by the time of year, your list of schools is probably not changing.</p>
<p>I think it just didn’t get noticed the first time around. I’d started there as a non-degree student who up-graded to candidate for the certificate program so I filed applications of different sorts at different times. When I did have the wayward transcript sent, it was recorded as received, but then mislaid by the registrar’s office so I had to re-send it. That’s another reason for having my own personal stash of transcript copies on hand. I can quickly send another one if the receiver has a “Whoopsie!” moment.</p>