Confusing Transcript

Applying to College
1

<p>I got a copy of my transcript from my high school, and the courses listed are very abbreviated. While some are obvious, others have really arcane course names like “TACS1” and “ADVSALPR.” Should I include a translated version, or can they figure it out?</p>

2

<p>Didn’t the school ask you to write your courses separately? I don’t think you need a translated version, it shouldn’t matter. You could if you wanted to, but most colleges require you to fill out a section on your own with the courses you’ve taken, so I don’t think it’s necessary.</p>

3

<p>Wow, yes you definitely should address that somehow. michaelm11 most applications are actually done through the commonapp, where there is no place to type out your transcript. Very few colleges have a section to manually input your transcript.</p>

<p>Can you ask your school for a readable version?</p>

4

<p>Yeah, I’m doing it through the Common App, and there’s only a place for senior-year courses. I’ll talk to my counselor. Thanks for the replies!</p>

5

<p>I had this problem too! Under my Electives, its a huge list of abbreviations. I know what they mean a random college wont know that DE means Digital Electronics.</p>

<p>Should I type them in the Additional Info section of the Common App?</p>

6

<p>Surely, this is an issue that your high school has addressed before. Yours is not the first class of seniors applying to college. And my guess is that in past years, many of those seniors actually got into college, having submitted transcripts that contained the very same abbreviations.</p>

<p>High schools do not send transcripts by themselves. They send other documents, such as your school profile, along with the transcript. Before you take any action to “fix this problem” on your own, you should find out whether it actually is a problem. You can simply say to your counselor, “I see a lot of abbreviations on my transcript that wouldn’t mean anything to me if I hadn’t taken those classes myself. Do you send something along with the transcript so that colleges know how to interpret it?”</p>