Transferring and Inaccessible Transcripts

Transfer Students
1

Some quick background: After graduating high school in 2012, I was accepted into university. Scholarships and grants were able to cover the entire cost of attending, but I unfortunately did disastrously bad. I’d easily been among the top students in high school, which led me to believe college would take just as little effort. I was wrong, and when I began to fail I gave up rather than seek help. I left that university owing about 10000 directly to the school (financial aid had been rescinded).

Since then, I’ve grown a lot as a person, but have struggled financially. I’ve held different jobs, including being a police officer, but have made minimal impact to the debt owed to the school, bringing it down only to around 6000.

Last fall, I decided to go back to college, and applied for a community college in my area. I’m in the middle of my third semester (summer semester) and will graduate after the fall with my associate’s degree. I have a 3.9 GPA and have been on the dean’s list both of my previous semesters (as little as that probably matters it being a small CC), but I want to pursue a bachelors afterwards. So I’ve been looking at transferring.

However, many of the universities I’ve looked at state that you should list all previous colleges and send transcripts. I contacted my old university and they wont give me any transcripts until the debt I owe is paid. What are potential options? Has anyone been in this situation before? The debt seems insurmountable.

I considered not including my original university, and someone I spoke to when I called a prospective school to inquire about potential work-around even suggested it. This seems dishonest though, and in the case of that person it seems to contradict the instructions of the application. Is it okay to omit information like that if i dont have any transferrable credits? Does anyone know of universities that dont require all previous transcripts? I only want somewhere accredited, not anywhere particularly prestigious. Any advice or insight would be appreciated.

2

You will need to pay off the debt before you can attend a 4-year university as you will need the transcript.

3

You need to settle your debt and get your original transcript to your community college as well. Every time you apply for admission to a degree program (that includes an Associate Degree), you are obligated to provide official copies of all of your college-level transcripts. No matter how old. No matter where in the world. No matter how bad the grades. If your CC doesn’t have this information on record, it is within their right to dismiss you, nullify your record with them, deny you your degree, etc. Yes, those things do happen. So communicate with the people at your CC to make sure those things don’t happen to you.

Set up a meeting with the people at your original university. Get a payment plan set up so you can get on with your life. Knocking 10k down to 6k is not “minimal impact”!! You have done a terrific job so far! If you could manage that, you can manage the rest.

4

@happymomof1
Thanks you for the kind words and words of warning. Luckily, when I applied for my current community college, I listed my previous university. They requested the transcripts but I met with people in the admissions office and they agreed to allow me to enroll with only unofficial transcripts. I think this may have been because they are an open admissions college. Due to this, I was operating on the assumption that this same arrangement might be possible with a four year university. Now that I’m looking to transfer, I realize not having official transcripts will be a major road block and was hoping someone here might have a workaround. Looks like I’ll need to figure out some way to deal with the debt before it’s time to start sending out transfer applications.

5

Do verify the situation with your community college. It is possible that the unofficial transcript was OK when you were applying for admission, but they might need to have an official one for finalize your records before graduating.