my soapbox

[SAEalumnus]

Long story as short as I can make it....

At my school, when you're within 10 classes or 40 units of graduation, you apply for a grad check. The registrar's office goes through your record and degree requirements and sends you a printed list of everything you still have left before you can graduate. When you're done, you apply to graduate and the registrar's office goes through everything since your grad check to make sure everything has been satisfied. Following this, one of two letters will be mailed to you: either a congratulatory letter confirming that your degree has been posted, or a deferral of graduation letter citing the remaining requirement(s) before you can graduate. If there are any mistakes, you have five weeks to clear them and still graduate. Otherwise, you have to register for additional units (to be considered an actively enrolled student - a requirement for graduation), pay additional registration fees, file another application to graduate, and pay another graduation fee.

So here's my situation. For my major, one is required to conduct a senior project for two consecutive quarters (PHY 461 and 462) at two units each. At the end of the first quarter, your project advisor assigns you either "SP" (satisfactory progress) or "I" (incomplete) on your transcript, depending upon how far you got in that first quarter relative to how far you should have gotten. At the end of the second quarter, assuming you've finished your project, you're given a letter grade for 462 at which time the advisor is supposed to change your grade on your transcript for 461 to the same letter grade. This way all four units are figured into your grade point average and with the same grade.

Recently, when grades for spring were posted, I noticed that I received an "A" for 462, but that the "SP" from 461 was changed not to a letter grade, but to "RP" (report in progress), which does NOT get figured into my GPA. I thought this was peculiar, but was not concerned until I received a deferral of graduation letter today in the mail, citing that I still needed 461 to graduate. The registrar's office didn't mail the letter until last week (the quarter ended last month), so I now have only until July 17th - next Thursday - a whole ten days to fix this in order to still technically graduate when I intended to.

This also means that I have to put my job hunt on hold - consider what would happen if I got a job that required a college degree, or worse, one that required the specific degree I've earned, only to find that I didn't technically graduate on account of these two stupid units because my advisor didn't make the correct notation on the grade form. Certainly I'd be fired. So I just finished sending an email to both my advisor and to the department chair informing them of this "oversight" and of the deadline and also stating that I'd be calling in the next day or two to make sure everything is being taken care of. Can you believe this? I might not graduate when I want to and might have to spend several hundred dollars in registration and application fees in order to re-apply for graduation if they can't fix this! I can't tell you how pissed off I am right now!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!