About transcripts

[amishera2007]

This is mentioned in most of the universities' application requirement:

"A transcript from every college/university the applicant has attended or received college credit from."

What does that mean? Does that mean you have to submit your school (pre-university) transcripts as well?

[Ancalagon The Black]

International Students/Knowledgable Domestic Students:

My college issues only 1 set of official transcript and I cannot go to the registrar/controller for attesting photocopies as they are unapproachable. Anyone from India faced this problem?

What are we supposed to do? Get notarized copies? What have successful students done?

[wahl]

So, the difference between a college and a university is that a university can have several colleges in it. It's sort of an issue of size and how your undergrad school defines itself. You are being asked to send transcripts from every college or university you attended after you graduated from high school. Some people transfer, or take courses at other schools, or go on to a master's program: that's why you might need to send more than one transcript.

A notarized copy sounds like your only option, Ancalagon. If schools are suspicious, they can always call your registrar to confirm. (And you may be asked to bring the original, official one with you to interviews or once admitted.)

[Ancalagon The Black]

wahl:

Yes, I reckon it is. In India the practice of issuing transcripts has quite not caught on yet... IITs do and some other newer institutions do but the majority of the govt. universities are stuck in the pre computer era !!

Some schools directly mention that notarized copies are fine. (Others are not so direct and U Chicago refuses point blank though I have heard from knowledgable people that in grad school, all conditions and policies are either waivable or relaxable...

[wahl]

You're right about all policies being relaxable. Some schools have so many policies, I doubt that they could keep track of all their rules if they tried. It's hard to picture that professors on these committees would bother to learn all the minutae of what is or isn't acceptable, preferred, suggested, etc.

[Ancalagon The Black]

So, wahl, are you a graduate student at caltech... in which department?

[amishera2007]

Here is my question. How important is the pre-university records? Are we supposed to mention any thing about them? Are we supposed to send the transcripts of those? I dont know why indians place too much emphasis on ssc/hsc results. I see every profile evaluation request by any indian mentions ssc/hsc results. So it is really confusing about how much the weights of those records are. For instance you can see here:

I20fever

My question is simple whether ssc/hsc records are of any importance or not? If so then whether the transcripts should be sent or not because most universities mention the requirement as this:

"A transcript from every college/university the applicant has attended or received college credit from."

From the language it seems that they want undergrad records (which makes perfect sense) not high school records.

[wahl]

Nope, I'm a senior in Biology. It's a small school, though, so I know many students and some of the grad students in ChE (they TA'd some chem classes I took).

[wahl]

No, do not send your high school or secondary school transcripts. I thought maybe the problem was a lack of clarity about the definition of "college" (in France for example, a collège is a junior high school), which is why I tried to define it in one of my last posts.

[Ancalagon The Black]

amishera: The reason why Indians post their ICSE/ISC marks is because they are misinformed and think that that is required. It is not required at all. They care nothing for high school records. That is a non entity in this graduate school application scenario.

wahl: Applying for PhD programs?