I have a friend who’s son is going to apply to Penn State this fall and I have been giving her the same advice and help that I give and others give here on this page. She called me today to tell me of an interesting discussion she had with the admissions department.
Apparently, they are changing their application. They said that the time to get high schools to respond to transcript requests is bogging down their system and lengthening their wait times significantly. To undercut this problem, starting this year, they will have the APPLICANTS enter ALL of the information from their transcripts themselves. Only if PSU has questions or concerns about what the applicant enters will they get an official transcript from the high schools. I was really confused about this method and thought she must have misunderstood… until she told me that her son has already applied to Pitt (their application window opens earlier than PSU) and that this is how they had to do it for Pitt as well. No official high school transcript unless requested. They had to sit and enter every single class, grade, credit and extra curricular themselves. Baffling - but I guess true.
I am not sure what keeps one from completely fabricating their transcript other than the fear of being found out if PSU goes looking. But other big name schools are apparently doing it this way as well.
The good news for those of you about to apply, your wait times MAY be reduced. Although since it’s the first year of doing a new procedure, it may take time to iron out the kinks.
Has anyone experienced this type of application before? I think it’s a crazy way to determine ones future…too much room for fraud. Although since I don’t know the whole procedure, perhaps they have a way of verifying to reduce fraud.
I don’t know that there’s really anyway to “reduce fraud” if there’s no longer an official transcript to back up what the students are saying anyway. I agree that it leaves too much room for falsifying one’s transcript, and if Penn state really wanted to ensure that that wasn’t happening, they would have to have the schools send the official transcripts regardless, which wouldn’t cut the time down on the process after all… I don’t get it. They should just implement a more standardized was of receiving/requesting the official transcripts.
The entire University of California and Cal State systems use self-reported academic records. I think Rutgers and SUNY do as well.
There is no incentive to falsify academic information because the schools do require the official transcript before a student can be enrolled. It just streamlines the initial decision process.
@eh1234 That makes more sense. If it’s simply a way to reduce the wait times for applications, but they still verify the transcripts before enrollment, then that is a win/win for everyone. Students would have no incentive to lie because they would be found out eventually. My friend didn’t think that transcripts were required at all to apply - and I guess that’s true. They will be needed to enroll though (if it’s done like the other schools) and that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification as to how other schools accomplish this.
I think there’s a whole thread dedicated to self-reported grades, but most schools that embrace self-reporting are not doing it to speed up approvals, they are doing it to lower overhead. All that staff for entering grades can be reduced or eliminated. Proof of graduation will still need to be produced via a transcipt, and if you have lied, your offer will be immediately rescinded. Also, most self-reporting schools only do that for domestic students – international applicants will still have to send a transcript.
@greenbutton I agree…my first thought was that they were reducing the amount of staff needed because they get SO many applications. However, my friend was told it was specifically to lower wait times. Perhaps if they need less staff to enter the transcripts, then they have that staff available to do other parts of the admission process, thus speeding it up. I honestly had no idea that other colleges do this, so I was very surprised. You learn something new everyday!
It will reduce wait time because many high schools submitted transcript in batches, sometimes weeks if not months after the students had submitted their application. The process of sorting everything from the big mail boxes, doing the initial evaluation and “reweighing” , then reconciling the transcript with the applicant, took a long, long time. Sure it’ll cut on staff but not by that much since the transcripts wil still be evaluated.
This way, they only check transcripts for admitted students who decide to enroll. That’s way fewer boxes of mail to open and sort through
The 9-11 transcript has to be exact or there’s an automatic rescission.
It only speeds up the wait if PSU intends to release more “waves” of decisions between Sept 1 and Jan 30. Otherwise, it only makes the pile of unreleased decisions accumulate quicker, which is not at all the same thing as everyone getting a decision faster. As we all know, the decision process seems to vary from year to year, and nobody should be reading this thread thinking that it means they will hear earlier, or if they have not heard, they are doomed.
@greenbutton Agreed. No one should think that. But there is also a reason to be hopeful that decisions will not be held so long. But as we know with PSU admissions, anything is possible.
