Transcripts & Your MBA Application

(or everything you need to know about transcripts but were afraid to ask, or didn't even know you needed to ask!)

As part of your application to business school, you must be a college graduate and have a decent grade point average or GPA.

To prove this, your dream B-school will ask you to upload a copy of your transcripts. This causes a lot of unnecessary confusion, so let's clear that up. Here are a few hard and fast rules that apply to the majority of Business Schools (but not all - so read to the end for the exceptions to the rules).

1) a TRANSCRIPT (aka "academic record" or "transcript of record" or whatever it might be called in your home country) is a list from your degree-granting university that includes every class you ever took, year by year, showing your grade for each class and sometimes the number of times you repeated the class.

Make sure your transcript clearly shows your name, the name of your degree-granting institution, the name of the degree you earned and the date your degree was conferred (given to you).

At the end of the transcript, there is often a GPA for the entire length of your degree. Sometimes there are also GPAs for each year of your degree. Sometimes there is nothing, it depends on your school and country.

2) GPA is worth its own heading here. Your Grade Point Average is important when applying to an MBA and you'll often seen applicants seeking advice on their profile by saying "I've got a 2.8 in X from Y University." Your GPA is determined by your degree-granting university based on the credits you got in each course you took during your degree. Your GPA is a numerical ranking of your overall average performance in your academic program. GPA is an important factor for admissions when determining your academic ability to handle the MBA curriculum.

However, not all GPAs are created equal. First off, the 4.0 scale that is typical to the U.S. and is so often highlighted in MBA stats is not universal. In Spain, grades come on a 10 scale. In Japan, it's out of 100. And in Peru, it's 20. When you are applying to elite MBA programs, the general rule is that you DO NOT CONVERT your original grades into a 4.0 system. It is not equivalent.

For example, any student at Spain's Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, one of Europe's most elite engineering programs, would be proud to graduate with anything above a 7.0; over 8 and you must be a super-genius. But once that number is manipulated into a 4.0 scale, it might be under 2.0. That conversion does not reflect the real achievements of a UPM grad.

3) Most schools ask for "unofficial" transcripts when you apply to their MBA program. UNOFFICIAL TRANSCRIPTs are often easily downloaded from your university's website or by contacting them directly. Unofficial transcripts may have a watermark across them and will not have an official stamp or seal from the university. For most MBA admissions teams, unofficial transcripts are fine when applying. You usually just upload a pdf copy directly into your online application.

4) The transcripts that you upload as part of your MBA application must be in ENGLISH. If your transcripts were issued in a language other than English, you must upload a translated copy, using an official translator from your own country or a US translator from the American Translator Association (ATA). However, a few schools will take transcripts in the native language of their country (ex. IESE accepts transcripts in Spanish, INSEAD accepts them in French).

5) But what if you attended more than one university and have TRANSFER credits? Most business schools require that you share the transcripts from your degree-granting university only. Others, HBS being an example, request transcripts from every university you attended that contributed to your degree. You need to read the fine print in the "education" section of your application to be sure.

6) Many students do dual-degrees or earn a degree that is equivalent to a combined master's/bachelors. Each school has their own requirements for MULTIPLE DEGREEs, but in general, it is fine to list them separately, as two different degrees, and then upload the transcripts twice. This is because most applications require a corresponding transcript to be uploaded for each university that you input in your application

7) STUDY ABROAD transcripts present another dilemma for applicants. Do you upload or not? First off, check your target Bschools' requirements, but most programs ask you to NOT upload them. Your study abroad classes are usually rolled into your overall transcript, so that is enough. You should also list your study abroad experiences in your resume/CV and possibly mention them in your essays.

8) CFA, PMO, MBAMath, HBS CORe and other courses - what to do with them? Again, it depends on the application. Some schools provide a place to upload copies of these transcripts, others do not. However, you should always have proof of these achievements on hand and be sure to list them in your resume/CV and anywhere else in your application where they fit. For example, INSEAD has a "supporting documents" page where you can upload extra certificates. Columbia Business School has a place for you to list them inside your application.

9) OFFICIAL transcripts! If you are thinking about official transcripts - Congratulations! - this means you're accepted. Most Bschools do not require official (sealed, stamped and sent directly from your degree-granting institution) until you are accepted. At that point, they will give you directions on how to do this.

10) Exceptions to the Rules! In the MBA application world, there are always exceptions, and that is true with transcripts:

a) The biggest exception is for international applicants who apply to schools that require the transcripts to be verified by a third-party such as SpanTran or WES. If the school you are applying to requires this, there is nothing you can do about it. Decide which service to use, upload your transcripts, pay the fee and wait. BUT if your school does not require such a service (and most top Bschools do not) then do not waste your time or money on these services.

b) Another transcript anomaly happens in the uploading phase when your application asks you to highlight different courses you took, usually quantitative courses. MIT Sloan does this, asking applicants to list out Microeconomics and Calculus courses, including course number, description and grade. The best practice here is to copy exactly what is on your transcript. If the school requires a course description, google your school's course catalog and cut/paste.

Transcript BOTTOMLINE - or the least you need to know!

1. Transcripts are critical parts of your MBA application. Admissions needs them to evaluate your profile and they will review them very closely, line by line, class by class, year by year.
2. The school you are applying to is the ultimate authority, check their transcript requirements and get exactly what they are requiring.
3. Once you have figured out what your target school wants in terms of transcripts, secure them ASAP. Many universities worldwide take summers off and if you end up needed them to help in some way with securing your transcript, you might find yourself out of time for the Round 1/September deadlines.
4. If your transcripts reflect a poor GPA or uneven performance, it is not the end of the world. Your GMAT/GRE score, work achievements and essays can go a long way to balancing that out - but this is a topic for another article.

Good luck and happy transcript hunting!