01It is a comparison, not a list
What you are looking at is your transcript held up against a set of rules and matched automatically, line by line. Requirements down one side, completed courses down the other, each course dropped into whichever slot it satisfies. Nothing on that page is anybody's judgment about you. It is the output of a matching routine, which is precisely why its mistakes are so particular and so fixable.
It also means the screen can only be as right as the rules it is matching against, and those rules belong to one specific year rather than to the present moment.
02One field decides most of the surprises
Near the top sits your catalogue year, which some schools call the requirement term or the program year. It fixes which version of the programme applies to you, ordinarily the version in force when you started, and it does not quietly update itself when the programme is revised. Two people sitting in the same class can therefore owe different courses and both be correct.
Check it today, then check it again after anything that interrupts your enrolment, because a readmission, a change of programme or a long gap can move you onto a newer catalogue with different requirements attached. That move is the commonest reason somebody discovers late that a course they passed no longer counts towards the thing they passed it for. Where your school lets you choose which catalogue to graduate under, ask about that explicitly, since the answer is occasionally worth an entire term.
03The five things audits get wrong
None of these are rare and all of them are repairable, usually by a form rather than by an argument. What they have in common is that nobody fixes them until a student notices, so notice early.
- Transfer credit parked in an elective bucket instead of the requirement it was brought in for, which is a request to your registrar rather than an error in your record
- One course satisfying two requirements, or stubbornly refusing to, since the rules on counting a course twice are local and rarely printed on the screen
- Courses in progress displayed as though they are finished, so the page looks complete while the term is still running
- A substitution or waiver your advisor agreed in conversation, which does precisely nothing until somebody files the paperwork for it
- A repeated course counted twice, or the wrong attempt counted, which moves both your credit total and your average
04Applying to graduate is a separate act
This is what catches people who have done everything else properly. A clean audit does not put your name on the graduation list. Applying to graduate is its own form with its own deadline, frequently a full term ahead of the end, and missing it usually pushes your award to the next conferral date no matter how finished the screen looks.
So do this once this week and twice a year afterwards. Open the audit, confirm the catalogue year, read only the unmet rows, and write each one down with the term it can next be taken in, because courses that run once a year are what really set a finish date. Take anything that looks wrong to your advisor in writing with the audit attached. Then put the graduation application deadline in your own calendar, since nobody will chase you for it. Where an unfinished course is holding a row open, an incomplete behaves in its own particular way here, and where the row is simply a class you cannot fit into your life this term, handing that class over is one way of clearing it.
FAQQuestions to control
My audit says a course I passed is unsatisfied. What now?
Do not assume the record is wrong, because usually it is not. Check whether the course landed in another bucket, such as electives, which happens constantly with transferred credit. Then check whether your catalogue year expects a different course code for that requirement. If neither explains it, email your advisor with the audit attached and the specific row named, and ask which form corrects it.
What is a catalogue year, and can mine be changed?
It is the edition of the programme rules you are held to, normally set by the term you began. Many schools will let you move forward to a newer catalogue, and some will let you stay on an older one after a break, but the choice is usually all or nothing rather than requirement by requirement. Ask your advisor to compare both versions before you agree to a change.
Does the audit count courses I am taking right now?
Most audits show work in progress separately, marked as planned or in progress, and some optimistically fill the requirement as though it were already earned. Read the key at the top of the page. When you are deciding whether to register for something, look only at what is genuinely completed, since a course still running is not a course passed until the grade posts.
My audit is clean. Does that mean I am graduating?
It means the requirements appear satisfied, which is most of the answer but not all of it. You still need the graduation application filed by its deadline, any outstanding balance cleared, and every in-progress course finished at the grade your programme requires. Ask your advisor to confirm all four in writing during the term before your last one, rather than in the final weeks.
