I have read the post you have put on why "W"'s don't show in a student's transcript prior to the drop date (https://support.populiweb.com/entries/21604568-why-isn-t-a-student-s-w-showing-up-on-their-transcript). However, I'm wondering what the reasoning is behind that? It causes issues for us when other departments look at transcripts. We would really like to see that changed to showing up in the transcript regardless of the drop date.
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Christal Fehr Sorry, but I have to disagree with this one. The current set-up in Populi works very well for us. Our policy is such that a student can drop a course within the first two weeks and get a full refund and have it pulled from their transcript... hence it's like they never took the course. So, for us, we really like that the W does not show up on the transcript until after the drop date.
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Brendan O'Donnell Emily,
In our experience with higher education, student transcripts remain in flux until the add/drop date, after which things get set in stone, as it were. Thus, the functionality in Populi reflects that predominant practice. A few inter-related reasons for this:
- The transcript is meant to be the official record what a student attempted to complete in a given term, and whether he/she was successful at doing so. If a student dropped a course before the add/drop date, it is reasonable to assume that he didn't really intend to attempt that course.
- Were Populi's transcripts changed to reflect every course change that happens before the Add/Drop date, they could quickly get unnecessarily cluttered with largely irrelevant information (students can be fickle and indecisive, can they not?).
- Piggybacking on the preceding, the add/drop date gives Populi a hard and fast date to go by when deciding what to put on the transcript—given that many schools open enrollment several months in advance of the start of a term, the transcript could get plugged full of several months' worth of changed decisions on the part of the student, advisor, etc.
All that said, if you'd like to write us a support request and explain how your other departments need to use the pre-add/drop withdrawal information, we'd be happy to dig in and figure out how to make Populi work for you...
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