<p>Do colleges really hand out blank diplomas to students who were supposed to graduate but missed a credit or two at the end of their final semester? If so, does the college just hand out the blank diploma without prior warning? (so the student gets a nasty surprise…)
Does anybody have any experience with this? Or is it just an urban legend?</p>
<p>I have never heard of anything like this.</p>
<p>If you still have a class or two left to complete at the end of the school year, many schools will still let you graduate with the rest of your class…as long as you’re registered for summer to finish the remaining classes. You probably don’t get your official diploma until the classes are completed though. That may be what this is referencing.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine they would hand you a blank diploma as some kind of cruel joke.</p>
<p>Most people in that situation would be aware that they had a class to finish in order to graduate, so it wouldn’t be a surprise. The registrar would be talking with them about options for walking at commencement and getting their diplomas.</p>
<p>My school does what comfortablycurt lists. If you’re eligible to get a diploma that day, you go with your ID to get it. I don’t think that there would be a way to make a provisional diploma for cases of one credit missing. You either have the degree or you don’t.</p>
<p>There’s some substantiation to this.</p>
<p>When I graduated from UC Berkeley, I got a total of two “diplomas”. The first one was in the form of a scroll during my department’s commencement ceremony. The second one, which was the actual diploma, came two months later in a large envelope.</p>
<p>One of the two was blank.</p>
<p>Some schools give you a fancy diploma holder when you graduate. Inside there should be the diploma. If you have another class to finish or some other circumstance, they can just not put the diploma inside the holder.</p>
<p>Some schools give the blank folder to everybody and send out the diplomas over the summer.</p>
<p>Back in the early '90s at a state university… I walked through my commencement in May but still had a few credits to complete during the summer. I received a diploma holder just like everyone else. Inside, on a paper the same size as a diploma, was a letter saying that I would receive my diploma “after the completion of all degree requirements” or something to that effect. They offered this for those of us who could graduate during the upcoming summer, so we could attend commencement with our class. I was told what to expect when I signed up, and it didn’t detract from the experience at all.</p>
<p>Daughter received a letter from her school this weekend stating that she hadn’t completed a course required by her major and that they had no record that she was currently enrolled in the course. Well, she has the final for the course this week. I spent about 90 minutes on the phone trying to reach someone today about it.</p>
<p>It turns out that they screwed up and she’s all set. They kept saying that she would go to the ceremony and get the diploma in August when she got her grade and I kept saying that she’s enrolled in the course now. They apparently thought that enrolled meant enrolled for the summer.</p>
<p>She just has to pass now.</p>
<p>This depends on what you mean by this question, but the blanket answer is that it doesn’t happen without warning.</p>
<p>Some colleges will let students walk in the ceremony with their class if they have under a certain number of credits missing, usually equivalent to one, maybe two classes. The student would have to complete those credits in the summer following graduation. In that case, the student would indeed receive a blank diploma at graduation. Other colleges don’t let students walk at graduation unless they have completed all of the classes they need to, so no, this doesn’t happen there.</p>