Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Senior Life Hack: How to check your remaining credits and see if you're on track for graduation

Your Unofficial Transcript is the best place to check how many credits you have left before graduation.
It is easier to find and understand the credit math on the Transcript than on the Degree Audit, particularly if you have repeated classes that allow you to earn credit more than once (e.g. Dance Technique, Advanced Language Through Content, Supervised Research, etc.) or are registered for a yearlong thesis that only gives you grades in spring.

    How to check how many credits you still need to complete your degree:

    1. Navigate to your Unofficial Transcript on Student Planning.

    2. Scroll down to the last semester. 

    a.  If your grades (or P*s in the case of spring 2020 classes) are all in, proceed to step #3a below.
    b. If you have an incomplete (I), a deferred exam (X), a Y for a yearlong thesis, or a class where the professor has not yet turned in grades, proceed to step #3b below.



    3. Scroll down to the bottom right of the transcript to see the totals. 

    a. If you have no missing grades, do some arithmetic to see how many credits you need to take this year in order to graduate

    122 (121 for transfer students) 
    minus cumulative points completed 
    = remaining credits 

    In the case above: 122 - 101.5 = 20.5   

    b. If you have "unfinished points" for classes where you've completed or will complete all expected work by the deadline, your arithmetic needs one more step

    First:
    Cumulative points completed 
    + unfinished points 
    = actual points to date.
     

    Then:
    122 [121 for transfer students] 
    minus actual points to date
    = remaining credits


    In the case above 102.5 + 3 = 105.5
    122 - 105.5 = 16.5

    4. Ask yourself? Can you realistically complete this number of remaining credits in the number of semesters you have left?

    a. If yes, hooray!

    b. If no:

    i. Check for missing credits from AP, IB, summer, study abroad, previous college, Dance/PE, etc and contact the registrar or appropriate office to make sure these are transferred


    ii. If you don't have any other credits and need to reconsider your plans, make an appointment to meet with your adviser and/or class dean ASAP.