Transfer GPA

Joel Spiess

Are you utilizing transfer GPA in your review of applicants? My institution has stakeholders that want to be able to review a current student's cumulative GPA from our institution (which is easily imported from our SIS to BAM), but if the student transferred to us, they also want to see the student's transfer GPA(s), as well. This becomes cumbersome when the student has attended multiple institutions before coming to us. And our Admissions and Registrar's Offices do not store transfer GPA(s) as an official part of the student's record. (They simply store the transcript.)

We are wondering if other institutions of higher ed are reviewing transfer GPAs, and if so, how. Are you importing transfer GPA into BAM? Manually reviewing transcripts? Having the student self-report? Do you calculate (manually or otherwise) a "lifetime GPA" reflective of all higher ed credits a student has completed? Understandably, a student might earn a cumulative GPA of 4.0 in their one term at our institution, but if they attended another university for four semesters before that and earned a GPA at that institution of 2.5, our scholarship administrators want to know that.

We are trying to help them understand if they are alone in their desire, or if not, how others tackle this problem without manually reviewing transfer transcripts and calculating lifetime GPAs for hundreds of students.

Victor Swindell

@Joel Spiess - do you have a away to put that information into a file that you can read when building your bio import file?
For example one of the things that the PTB wanted for our BAM system is the Major and the Major GPA, which is NOT Stored in Banner but can be exported from Cognos. So I have a file created that is exported monthly (cause it's not gonna change that often), When I'm building the Student import file, part of the process is to read that file to get that data.

just a thought.
Now as to how to handle multiple institutions.. this is something that needs to be speced out… do you want list X or all of them

Joel Spiess

@Victor Swindell, thank you for your thoughts. Our import file runs weekly and is an entirely automated process, so we wouldn't have a way to add external pieces of data manually, unfortunately.

Ashley Darabaris

@Joel Spiess At Auburn, we import the transfer GPA from the student's record in Banner. All transcripts from other colleges received are articulated with a resulting GPA that allows us to have a cumulative transfer GPA in our import.

Mallorie Fonseca

@Joel Spiess
We are fortunate enough to have Transfer & High School GPA imported from Banner because our Records/Admissions office keeps that information for some institutional awards. However, I think what I would recommend is asking students to either self-report their GPA through the General Application or from the specific Opportunities that need transfer GPA. If a department is worried about a false answer, they could ask them to upload an unofficial transcript or proof of grades in another way as well, though that might make it slightly harder for students to apply.