Transcript Evaluation Services FAQ's
General FAQ's
A:All courses taken at other higher education institutions will be included in the
maximum time frame and cumulative Pace Rate assessment, provided the courses will
apply toward degree or certificate requirements. Transfer coursework is NOT included
in the cumulative GPA assessment.
Courses at proprietary and trade schools will generally not be accepted for credit
toward SMCCCD degree or certificate requirements. Upper division courses from four-year
colleges and universities will be counted when calculating maximum time frame.
All students with bachelor degrees will be considered to have exceeded the maximum
time frame and must be approved by the appeal committee before being funded.
Note that transfer coursework is evaluated by the District Transcript Evaluation Services
(TES) department. Because students are able to submit transcripts at any time of the
semester SAP calculation reflects student’s status at the completion of the most recent
semester. If coursework is evaluated after a calculation has been done the coursework
will be included in the subsequent semester. This may affect your financial aid eligibility
with our district. Please contact your financial aid office.
Foreign Coursework: Students with a foreign bachelor’s degree will be considered to
have exceeded the maximum time frame and must be on an approved SAP appeal by the
appeal committee before being funded, regardless if the degree is equivalent in the
U.S. Foreign courses will be counted if they have been professionally evaluated and
accepted by the district.
A: To view your success plan and check for updates, please log into mySMCCCD Student
Portal and select “Student Success Link”
A: When complete, you will be able to view your transferred courses in DegreeWorks.
An email will be sent to your my.smcccd.edu email account informing you of this. If
the evaluators need additional information or have other questions, they will communicate
with you via your mysmcccd.edu student email.
A: Degree Works is an online tool students may use to view how completed courses can
be applied to many educational goals.
Your official TES evaluation results are loaded on Degree Works and readily viewable
by you and your counselor. With the TES evaluation completed, you can see how your
coursework (taken within SMCCCD and elsewhere) applies to certificates, associate
degrees, CSUGE and IGETC requirements. To use Degree Works, go to your WebSMART and
select Student Services.
A: Because of the complexity of the service and the high volume of requests, completion
time for an evaluation may be many months. If the transcript evaluators need you to
provide additional information, the evaluation process could take longer.
A: When we receive a transcript for evaluation, every lower division, degree applicable
course completed in the last twenty years with a grade of A, B, C, D, CR or P is reviewed.
These courses, units, and grades earned are applied as appropriate to your SMCCCD
goal and used for educational planning purposes.
Courses with a W, NC or NP notations and courses with a grade of F are not reviewed
or applied. Courses with an I, IP, RD may delay an evaluation request and require
written explanation as reason for not having a final letter grade nor any other notation
indicating a final outcome for the course.
Due to limited course and articulation information for older coursework, we only be
complete course–by–course evaluations for courses that have been completed in the
last 20 years. Coursework completed over 20 years ago will be added as bulk units
onto your student record for the term the evaluation was completed. This will support
pace rate calculations for financial aid students. Bulk units will be for local SMCCCD
credit only.
A: We cannot apply foreign coursework to CSU General Education certification or IGETC
certification. You may be able to apply the courses towards a SMCCCD certificate or
associate degree. Please review the Foreign Transcripts page of this website for more
information.
Exceptions: In unique cases, foreign courses may be applied to IGETC if the foreign
institution has United States regional accreditation and if course equivalency may
be determined by the SMCCCD college. Additionally, languages other than English, taken
at institutions outside the U.S. may be applied to IGETC Area 6, with required documentation.
All other foreign coursework cannot be applied to CSU General Education certification
or IGETC certification.
A: Lower division coursework from a college or university with SMCCCD approved accreditation
is reviewed and analyzed to determine how or if it can be applied to associate degree
and certificate requirements and CSU GE and IGETC certification requirements.
Coursework from another California community college that already has established
articulation with the UC and CSU systems is evaluated according to that articulation.
When evaluating coursework from a California community college, we use data available
in www.assist.org.
When evaluating coursework from a California State University institution or a University
of California institution, we look at how the course was applied at the home institution
and attempt to apply it in the same manner within SMCCCD.
When evaluating coursework from a private or out-of-state college or university that
does not have independent articulation with CSU or UC, we review the coursework as
per the rules and regulations for CSU GE and IGETC certification.
A: It is essential students who plan to transfer work with a counselor and engage
in academic planning. Having your transcripts from colleges and universities outside
of the SMCCCD evaluated is another essential step. You must know the “whole academic
picture”, and coursework you completed outside of the SMCCCD is part of that picture.
TES will review and analyze your prior coursework and apply it, where applicable,
to CSU GE and IGETC. TES cannot tell you how coursework from outside of the SMCCCD
will be applied to a university major. The college or university to which you transfer
will make that determination. Also, use www.assist.org to view important transfer
information.
A: No. However, it is important to know the “whole picture”, and coursework you completed
outside SMCCCD is part of that picture. TES will review your coursework and apply
it, where applicable, to CSU GE and IGETC.
Many students need to attend more than one school to get courses needed to meet lower
division major requirements for transfer to University of California or California
State University systems. If you have attended ONLY California community colleges,
refer to www.assist.org to see how coursework from each institution will meet lower
division GE and lower division major requirements.
A: Lower division coursework from a college or university with SMCCCD accepted accreditation
is reviewed and analyzed to determine how or if it can be applied to certificate and
associate degree requirements and CSU GE and IGETC certification requirements.
The main areas of concern are related to CSU GE Area A3 and IGETC Area 1B – Critical
Thinking and Composition. These particular requirements represent unique curricula
designed by faculty in our three public systems – University of California, California
State University and California Community Colleges – and contain very specific components
of critical thinking and second semester composition (in the case of IGETC 1B). Most
often, coursework from outside the California community college system is not approved
to meet CSU GE Area A3 and/or IGETC Area 1B.
For application of mathematics courses to meet CSU GE Area B4 and/or IGETC Area 2A,
the course must list a college intermediate algebra course as a prerequisite.
A: Catalog rights are associated with certificate and associate degree program requirements.
A student establishes catalog rights for the academic year in which the first enrollment
is recorded at a SMCCCD college. For example, if you enroll in Fall 2012 or Spring
2013 or Summer 2013, you have catalog rights to the 2012-2013 catalog. You are held
to the requirements listed for the certificate or associate degree at the time you
first enroll.
However, a student may use his/her original catalog rights OR adopt the catalog rights
of any subsequent catalog. For example, if when you begin your studies at SMCCCD,
a specific associate degree major is not listed in your “catalog rights” year and,
a year later, a major of your interest is approved and listed in a subsequent catalog,
you may decide to adopt the later catalog year that supports the new major you want.
A: It may or may not. For courses at College of San Mateo, see collegeofsanmateo.edu/prerequisites/
for more information. For courses at Cañada College or Skyline College, please check
with your counseling department.
Post Evaluation FAQ's
A: The coursework you completed as part of your BS degree from your previous college
entitled you to take part in the benefits of our Pathway from a Bachelor's to Associate's
degree. This means that you will not be required to complete further local GE / competency
requirements for regular Associate's degrees* in our district.
*please note that pathway does not apply to AA-T and AS-T degrees which have separate
requirements.
A: Because some outside institutions operate on the quarter unit calendar system,
we have to convert those units to our semester units using a factor of 2/3 semester
units per 1 quarter unit (or ~ 0.667). This will result in odd-looking decimals in
multiples of 0.67.
A: Important: Please consult with a Counselor to determine if the following approach
is appropriate for your situation and worth the time it may take to complete these
steps. If your eventual goal is to transfer to another 4-year institution, each institution
has their own policies about whether they will honor other institution's. Also, please
note that because of how GPA is calculated, the exact number of D/F-graded courses
required to improve your GPA is hard to determine. The more you can successfully alleviate,
the better the chances of improving your overall GPA with our district.
Please consult with your Counselor as to whether your previous colleges had some kind
of academic renewal / grade alleviation process whereby students can petition to officially
"exclude" substandard grades (Ds or Fs) on their transcript. If enough of these are
granted are granted, this can improve your overall GPA.
If you decide to pursue this and are successful at petitioning to exclude any D/F
grades, please submit an updated official transcript from the applicable institution(s)
as well as a second Transcript Evaluation request.
Once we receive both new transcript and new evaluation request, we can remove any
grades that have been officially excluded on the transcript(s).
A: Often, we are unable to transfer in courses once we've examined the content based
on the course descriptions.
At other times, we are limited by the technical aspects of our software. In the case
of course sequences where two or more courses is the equivalent of one or more of
our courses, this is a known limitation that we have, unfortunately.
That being said, please consult with your Counselor to see whether anything further
can be done in your specific situation
A: When we cannot locate a 1-to-1 match, our practice is to precede the incoming course
number with an “X" followed by the original course number (e.g. if the other course
was originally MATH 2658, the corresponding X-numbered course would be “MATH X2658.”
This signifies that we do not have a good 1-to-1 match in our current catalogs. Such
courses may still be eligible for applicability to specific general education or major
requirements. Please consult with an academic Counselor for further assistance.
Exceptions: In unique cases, foreign courses may be applied to IGETC if the foreign
institution has United States regional accreditation and if course equivalency may
be determined by the SMCCCD college. Additionally, languages other than English, taken
at institutions outside the U.S. may be applied to IGETC Area 6, with required documentation.
All other foreign coursework cannot be applied to CSU General Education certification
or IGETC certification.
A: For our purposes, “degree applicable” includes any course that another regionally-accredited
institution considers to be BOTH lower division and appropriate in level for a 2-year
(or 4-year) degree. IMPORTANT: This does not mean only courses that are applied to
your current major. Rather, “degree applicable” courses include any course that is
not remedial or developmental in level that can meet elective, general education or
major requirements at the original institution.