PRO TIP: Save and Store Your Course Syllabus

College courses your teen takes in high school should generally be sent to their target college without a hitch, but on occasion, the target college may need more information in order to accept that credit. Today’s pro tip helps you make the transfer smooth and seamless.

We regularly advise people to save the syllabus/syllabi from all college courses in case a future college needs to review the course to accept it for credit. This is the process my family follows:

1. At the beginning of the course, my teen downloads the soft copy of the syllabus and supporting documents from their college course shell.
2. Save these documents to our computer in a folder I call “course syllabi.” Each course gets its own sub-folder.
3. My teen then emails the syllabus and documents to me (Mom).
4. I save it in an email folder and download it to my folder on my computer called “course syllabi.”
5. I print the syllabus and place it in my school records binder.

I now have 4 copies of the syllabus.

2 copies saved on our hard drives, 1 in my email, and 1 printed copy.

If that seems like overkill, today, that advice saved my own student from having to retake a science course with lab in the 11th hour before high school & college graduation!

In 2020, he took an Astronomy course through Arizona State University’s Universal Learner program, formerly known as EA/Earned Admissions. At that time, the college he attends for dual enrollment reviewed the course and approved it for transfer, and approved it to satisfy a general education science core course with lab.

His final course grades from the first 8 weeks were rolling in and he’s getting close to graduation, so I was going over his transcript and noticed that the Astronomy course was on his transcript, but it wasn’t coded as a core course. I immediately emailed his advisor to inform her of this situation.

The next day she requested that we send the syllabus so the department chair could review it. I forwarded the email from the original approval to her, thinking that would be the end of it. It was NOT!

I had to send a copy of the course syllabus to the college again, for review.

We received approval, again, for the course to be used as a general education core science course with lab, thankfully. Without that syllabus, the answer likely would have been no – though I can assure you I would have fought that answer tooth and nail since I had the original approval in writing!

Having these documents saved in several places made it easy to quickly put my hands on the documents they needed. The printed copies are combined with all of his school and medical records, test scores, academic accomplishments, driver’s license paperwork/copy of his driver’s license, a copy of the birth certificate, social security card, unofficial college transcripts, CLEP score reports, industry certification records, and any kind of documented work. I keep these in a binder with his name on it.

When he graduates from high school in May, I’ll put a bunch of signed, notarized high school transcripts in envelopes, seal them and sign over the seal, and add them to the binder. If something should happen to me, or I’m not able to quickly put together a transcript to send out for him, he will have a handful of extra transcripts ready to be mailed to a school, if needed. I’ll also keep soft copies of his transcript, syllabi, and any other records on a disc and thumb drive, and store them in the binder.