What Makes an Academic Transcript Official
Birth certificates, driver licenses, college transcripts. Our lives are filled with official documents from the day we are born. You need your birth certificate to get into elementary school, apply for a driver’s license, and apply for a marriage license among other things. You may have a copy of it, and as long it has that raised seal on it, it is considered official. An official academic transcript is a little different, however.
When a college requests an official academic transcript of a student, there are specific requirements involved in keeping the document official. In order for a transcript to be considered official it must arrive in a sealed envelope sent directly from the issuing college to the college’s Registrar. An official transcript is almost always printed on special security paper noting that the document is official. A photocopy cannot qualify. Some official transcripts include a raised seal however the school may note different requirements on the transcript. Nonetheless, the document should always be signed by the campus Registrar. In the end, it cannot go through the student’s hands and the Registrar must be the one who opens the envelope. There are reasons for these requirements.
Colleges must take preventative measures to ensure accuracy of records. Colleges need to avoid the possibility of someone editing a transcript so that one appears to have passed a class, earned a better GPA than one really did, or actually graduated from a program when one did not. For these reasons and to protect a school’s accreditation, colleges need to ensure that the documents they keep on record for a student are correct. To ensure accuracy, the Registrar of a college must receive the transcript directly from the issuing school.
Even though a student may have a signed copy of his or her academic transcript on hand, it is not considered official to a college unless it is received directly from the previous institution. In summary, a student needs to request to have his or her official transcripts be sent directly from one institution to the other.