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A very time-consuming aspect of filling out the Central Application Service for Physician Assistant (CASPA) application is the transcript entry section. In this section, you will enter every single class you have ever taken! You are required to enter all courses, including those that you withdrew from, repeat courses, online courses, lab courses, and every other type of course you have taken. This section will take a while and it is best to take your time to avoid making errors. Errors may delay your application verification after you submit it, which will be discussed later!
Enter classes semester by semester, copying the class title, department prefixes and course numbers, credit amount, and the grade received from your official university transcript. This may include 130+ credits of courses! An “Academic Status” must also be applied to each course taken. This includes freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, post-baccalaureate, or graduate status. Courses taken at a college while still in high school or “dual enrollment courses” will be categorized under “Freshman” for academic status. You should also enter in-progress courses and planned courses. For these types of courses, select the academic status as “In Progress/Planned.” This is important if you are applying to programs with prerequisite courses that you have not yet completed. This will show schools that you are either finishing up the course or will be taking it the following semester.
Once you have filled out all of your courses, you select “Review & Finalize My Transcripts.” Following this you will designate specific courses under special categories if necessary. This includes repeated classes, advanced placement credit, other test credit, honor courses, or study abroad courses. It is very common for applicants to have repeated courses on their transcript. Both the first time the course is taken, and the repeated time need to be reported in the transcript entry section. Regarding this, CASPA website states that “courses should only be marked as repeated if you repeated them at the same institution (i.e., you retook the course for a higher grade). Withdrawn courses, courses taken at different schools, and courses taken multiple times for new credit (i.e., school band, physical education, etc) are not considered repeated. Record full credit values and grades for all repeated courses. CASPA is required to include all repeated courses in GPA calculations, regardless of an institution’s or state’s academic forgiveness policies.”
CASPA offers a transcript-entry service that will fill this information out for you for $69 for 1-3 transcripts, $95 for 4-6 transcripts, and $145 for 7 or more transcripts. Personally, I enjoyed going through this section and inputting the information myself. Reviewing and reflecting on every class I have taken that got me to the point of applying to PA school made me proud, even though I have withdrawals and repeat courses on my transcript. If you start this section early, you should have plenty of time to enter your course information and quadruple check it all without feeling pressured to get it done quickly!
There is a lot of room for error while filling out the transcript entry section. If you do not catch mistakes before submission, then during the time your application is being “verified,” it will be flagged. Once you submit your CASPA application, it gets placed in line to be “verified.” CASPA defines verification as follows: “Verification is the process used to ensure all of your coursework was entered correctly and consistently. Since credit values, grade values, and course subjects vary widely from school to school, your programs need some type of standardization so they can accurately compare applicants. This standardization is achieved by using your coursework to create a standard set of GPAs, ensuring you are compared to other applicants fairly and equally.”
If your application has a mistake, such as a transcript entry mistake, it will be delayed in the verification process. CASPA states that “redelivery of your application does not change your submission date, but it does affect the date your application is considered complete. If you notice errors in your application before verification, contact customer service to undeliver your application so you can correct it. This will delay your application, but verification will resume sooner than if you waited for the errors to be found during the verification process.”
Be diligent when entering your transcript to avoid any mistakes and ultimately avoid your application verification being delayed! Always triple check! Here are some examples:
For more information about the CASPA transcript process, visit the CASPA Applicant Help Center website.
