Help with Transcripts

Revised on January 20, 2022
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COLLEGES ATTENDED SECTION REQUIREMENTS
TRANSCRIPT REQUIREMENTS

After reporting institutions in the Colleges Attended tab under the Academic History section of your application you will be able to view the transcript requirements for each program you are applying to. Please note that some programs may require that you send official transcripts to NursingCAS, some may require unofficial transcripts, and others might not require any transcripts. To view your program’s requirements, review the Transcript Requirements on the right-hand side of the Colleges and Universities Attended section (see example below). Read the full instructions on submitting Transcripts in the Applicant Help Center.

SENDING TRANSCRIPTS

If Your Program Requires Official Transcripts:

For each college or university entered, click Order and select if you are ordering electronic transcripts (recommended) or submitting a transcript via mail. Transcripts will be validated for authenticity by the operations team at NursingCAS. Each transcript will be provided to designated schools as a high-resolution PDF. These transcripts are considered official by AACRAO. Note that if you attended a foreign college or university – and depending on your program’s requirements – you may be required to send a foreign evaluation. More information is provided in the Applicant Help Center. 


If Your Program Requires Unofficial Transcripts:

Your program does not require you to send any transcripts to NursingCAS. For each college or university entered, click Upload and upload any associated transcripts.

If Your Program Doesn’t Require Transcripts to be Submitted Through NursingCAS:

You are NOT required to have transcripts sent directly to NursingCAS. HOWEVER, your programs may still require transcripts sent directly to them. Please check with your program to determine additional transcript requirements outside of NursingCAS.

TRANSCRIPT ENTRY

To view each program’s transcript entry requirements, scroll down to the Program Requirements section of the application’s Transcript Entry page. Your selected programs may have different requirements for transcript entry. For example, some programs may require that you enter all of your coursework, some may require that you enter only prerequisite coursework, and others might not require that you enter any coursework (see example below). Read the full instructions on completing Transcript Entry in the Applicant Help Center.

If Your Program Requires Full Transcript Entry:

Enter all of the coursework you completed at all US and English Canadian colleges or universities attended. See Foreign and French-Canadian Transcripts and Study Abroad or Overseas US Transcripts for guidelines on foreign coursework. Note the following:

  • Reporting coursework accurately is your responsibility. Since credit values, grade values, and course subjects vary widely from school to school, your programs need some type of standardization so they can accurately compare applicants. This standardization is achieved by using your coursework to create a standard set of GPAs, ensuring you are compared to other applicants fairly and equally.
  • Complete the Colleges Attended section before entering your courses.
  • Report all courses on your transcripts, not just prerequisites. Be sure to include courses from which you withdrew, repeated courses, ungraded labs, test credits, gym courses, orientations or other non-graded courses.
  • Use official copies of your transcripts. Coursework must exactly match your official transcripts; don’t use an unofficial version, like a printout from your school’s website. List your courses under the correct term, year, and class level. Department prefixes and course numbers must precisely match those on your transcripts.
  • Enter courses under the institution where you originally took the course, exactly as they appear on the original school’s transcript. Don’t list courses under the school in which the credits were transferred. You may need to go back to your Colleges Attended and add a school to enter the transfer credits for.
  • NursingCAS will verify your coursework entry for accuracy, and your application will be returned to you if there are any inconsistencies, which may result in delays in submitting your application.

If Your Program Requires Transcript Entry for Prerequisites Only:

Entering prerequisite coursework is a 3-step process:

  1. Visit the Program Materials section of your application to review each program’s prerequisite coursework requirements. Programs that require prerequisites will have a Prerequisites tab where you can view this information.
  2. Once you are familiar with the requirements, navigate to the Transcript Entry section and enter only the specific courses you have completed which match each program’s prerequisite coursework requirements.
  3. When you have finished entering your prerequisite coursework, return to the Program Materials section and visit each program’s page to identify the courses that fulfill each program’s requirements. To assign a prerequisite on the Prerequisites tab:
    • Click Assign Course.
    • Click the plus sign next to the course(s) that you believe fulfills the prerequisite. You can match multiple courses to one prerequisite, if applicable.
    • Click Save and Exit.

NursingCAS will provide a standard set of GPAs to your selected program(s). Note that if any program you are applying to requires full transcript entry, then you must enter all of your coursework. You only need to input this information once, as it can be used for every program you are applying to. See the section above for more information.

If Your Program Doesn’t Require Transcript Entry:

You don’t need to enter any coursework and NursingCAS won’t provide GPAs to the program(s) you select. If the program(s) requires official transcripts to be submitted to NursingCAS, then a Per Transcript GPA(s) and an Overall GPA will be provided to the program(s).

WHY DO I NEED TO ENTER IN MY COURSE WORK?

In order to verify your coursework to help schools make admissions decisions, this data must be entered into your application. Nursing and admissions staff review and evaluate hundreds of transcripts (depending on the size of the applicant pool) when making admissions decisions. It can be difficult to evaluate applicant coursework when different schools report it in different ways and transcripts vary in look. Typically, schools do hand GPA calculations and the volume of applicants they review can lead to human error. The verification process helps to cut down on human error which benefits both applicants and nursing programs.

NursingCAS realizes that transcript entry can be a time-consuming process depending on the amount of coursework information an applicant needs to enter. But please understand that taking the time to input this data will greatly help the admissions staff at the programs you are applying to by reducing the number of GPAs they have to manually calculate per applicant.

Entering coursework is a common expectation for students applying to health programs such as medicine, dentistry, physical therapy, pharmacy, public health, podiatry, veterinary, chiropractic, occupational therapy, physician’s assistant, audiology, communications sciences, optometry, health administration, and osteopathic medicine; all enter in their course work as part of the application process.