Coursework Entry

Students must enter all college courses taken in the United States in the Academic History section of the CSDCAS application. Because this includes repeated, failed, and withdrawn courses, coursework entry will take students an average of 1–2 hours to complete.

Why does CSDCAS require coursework entry? Because it:

• Allows CSDCAS to generate 20+ different GPAs using standardized criteria and calculations and allows programs to calculate custom GPAs without manually entering course credits and grades.
• Gives applicants’ designated programs access to course history in a standardized electronic format that can be sorted by any field, eliminating the need for programs to decipher varying transcript formats.
• Collects additional information about an applicant’s course history that is not typically on transcripts, such as the course subjects, prerequisite matches, and student status at the time each course was taken (e.g., freshman).

It’s easy to prepare your students for this section of the application process:

• Include a link to the applicant help center on your website and be sure to include language that emphasizes this task as a part of the CSDCAS process, so students can be prepared.
• Encourage applicants to have unofficial transcripts on hand to assist with entering required information.
• Provide the CSDCAS Professional Transcript Entry Service information to applicants who do not wish to enter their coursework and chose to pay an additional fee to have CSDCAS staff complete this for them.