Apply to Graduate School

For our purposes, "official" means sent directly from the issuing office to our receiving office. This definition comes from the policies of the North Dakota University System and cannot be petitioned. We judge transcripts to be official if they arrive to us:

• In an envelope sealed by the issuing institution,
• Via a secured electronic transcript exchange program, of which we are already a member, or
• In an envelope sealed by a U.S. State Department sponsored organization (e.g. USEF), and are attested by that organization.

Basically, we judge a transcript to be official by the way it was received. We must be vigilant about fraudulent credentials.

Also, keep in mind that the United States government considers educational records to be federally protected and private. We cannot obtain your records unless you arrange for them to be sent them to us.

We want to know as complete a picture as possible of each applicant's academic career, and also:

• Obtaining an official transcript lets us know that you are not financially indebted to some other institution.
• Sometimes transfer credits lose grade information, or course titles change.
• Transcripts can and do change over time (grades are revised, degrees are added/revoked).
• Transcripts contain more information than grades (i.e. degrees or certificates, accreditation, suspensions and dismissals, etc.).

The only exception is if credits from another institution were transferred to UND and show on an official UND transcript.

Complete Academic Record

We require a complete set of official transcripts for domestic applicants, which represents every college credit that you have attempted. An official transcript must be sent to UND from the institution which originally issued the credit. We call this a complete academic record. We require this of each and every applicant to a certificate or degree program.

There have been some circumstances when obtaining an official transcript is not possible. Please read these items to see if a situation applies to you:

• If your institution will not release your transcript because of a financial, disciplinary, or academic hold, you will need to work with your institution to resolve the issue.
• If your domestic institution cannot locate your transcript, we will need to have a letter verifying that fact. This letter should come to us from the Registrar of your institution, or another person of sufficient authority. The letter should indicate the reason why the transcript is unobtainable. These letters will be considered on a case-by-case basis. If this applies to you, please email our Admissions team at gradschooladmissions@UND.edu, before you send any documents to us.
• If your institution awarded you transfer work based upon military service, we might request a letter from the Registrar of your institution, or another person of sufficient authority. This letter should explain that credit was issued based upon service and not coursework. These letters will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
  • Credit for military service is not the same thing as credit earned from a college while in the military, e.g. Community College of the Air Force.
• If your institution is/was located in a country affected by war or extreme natural disaster, we understand that your transcripts may be impossible to locate. If your institution is located in Iran, we understand that your transcript's envelope may be opened before it arrives to us. If either situation here applies to you, please email our Admissions team at gradschooladmissions@UND.edu, before you send any documents to us. These issues will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

You can still apply if your degree will be earned before you plan to start taking courses in your new graduate program. Sometimes students are on track to graduate (e.g. in May) but the want to apply to a program with an earlier deadline (e.g. in March). Students can still apply to a program, but they need to request official transcripts twice:

• Once at the time of application, which would show official transcripts through that point.
• Once after the degree has been earned and shows on an official transcript.

Transcripts Due for Domestic Students

For domestic students, we would need to receive an official transcript with your degree posted by the end of your first semester.

Transcripts Due for International Students

Some international students may need to send us an official copy of their diploma or degree certificates. We would add this requirement to your official admission letter. We would not be able to fully admit you until we received your transcript, diploma, or degree certificate.

An applicant may not petition our policies. However, a member of the graduate faculty may petition on your behalf. This does not mean that the faculty will petition, and it does not mean that such a petition would be approved.

If you believe that you have a situation which warrants exceptional consideration, you may contact a faculty member of the program to which you are applying to ask if they would petition on your behalf.

The appearance of transfer credit on a transcript does not meet our requirement of a complete academic career. Therefore, if you have transferred credit, we must have a transcript from the institution which originally issued the credit.

Some students do not know that they have transferred credit, especially if they took college classes while in high school. If possible, you may want to speak to your institution to see if any credit has been transferred into your record.

Some students do not know that a study abroad experience also meant that credits were transferred. In some cases, a study abroad experience means that your college credits were originally issued by the foreign institution and not your home campus. If possible, you may want to speak to your institution to see if any credit has been transferred into your record.

Students who earned degrees from the following institutions in 2010 or later need to list them in the application, but do not need to request transcripts:

• Bismarck State College
• Dakota College at Bottineau
• Dickinson State University
• Lake Region State College
• Mayville State University
• Minot State University
• North Dakota State College of Science
• North Dakota State University
• University of North Dakota
• Valley City State University
• Williston State College

To verify whether or not you need to request certain transcripts, you can contact our admissions office.

If you have previously attended UND, our admissions staff will attempt to obtain a copy of your transcript. You do not need to request an official UND transcript be sent to our office. Some of our older transcripts are not accessible by the School of Graduate Studies. If we are not able to retrieve your transcript for any reason, our admissions staff will contact you and you will need to request an official copy.

We keep application materials for anyone who becomes a student indefinitely, and we keep application materials for anyone who was denied admission for three years. When you apply again, we will search our archives to find transcripts you had previously submitted, and we will use those transcripts again. Please note, we will still need transcripts for any academic work you have done since that last application.

We consider all submitted applications to be incomplete until we have received all items (including official transcripts) required by the department to which you are applying. Please consult the application instructions above to see which items are required by your department.

Your application will move to "Final Processing" when we have all required items. During this time, we determine your minimum eligibility for the program to which you applied, and we verify that we have a complete academic record. If we notice that we need another official transcript, your application will again become incomplete and you will be notified.

Also, please note that your application is only valid for the program and term indicated on your application. If your application has not yet received a decision on the fourth week of the semester to which you applied, your application will be administratively denied. Before you receive an official decision, you may submit an Application Change Request Form to change the admit term on the application. We will honor a request to change an admit term only once.

If, during "Final Processing," we find that we have your complete academic record, we will send your application to the department for their review. You will be notified when this occurs. When your application is "Sent to Department," you will know that we have a complete academic record.