College Coursework

Requirements

Enter all of the coursework you completed at all US and English Canadian colleges or universities attended. Note the following:

Reporting coursework accurately is your responsibility. 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.
Complete the Colleges Attended section before entering your courses.
Report all courses on your transcripts, not just prerequisites. Be sure to include courses from which you withdrew, repeated courses, ungraded labs, test credits, gym courses, orientations, or other non-graded courses.
Use official copies of your transcripts. Coursework must exactly match your official transcripts; don't use an unofficial version, like a printout from your school's website. List your courses under the correct term, year, and class level. Department prefixes and course numbers must precisely match those on your transcripts.
Enter courses under the institution where you originally took the course, exactly as they appear on the original school's transcript. Don't list courses under the school in which the credits were transferred. You may need to go back to your Colleges Attended list and add a school to enter the transfer credits for.

Additional Documents

If you are a freshman applicant for the 2022-2023 cycle, review the 2022-2023 Cal State Apply Freshman Application Guide for detailed instructions.
If you are a freshman applicant for the 2023-2024 cycle, review the 2023-2024 Cal State Apply Freshman Application Guide for detailed instructions.
If you are a transfer applicant for the 2022-2023 cycle, review the 2022-2023 Cal State Apply Transfer Application Guide for detailed instructions.
If you are a transfer applicant for the 2023-2024 cycle, review the 2023-2024 Cal State Apply Transfer Application Guide for detailed instructions.
If you completed dual enrollment courses, review the 2022-2023 Dual Enrollment Coursework Guidance document or the 2023-2024 Dual Enrollment Coursework Guidance document.

Enter a Term

Click Start to begin entering courses for a college or university.
Add a semester, quarter, or trimester depending on the term system you selected in the Colleges Attended section.
Select a term.
Select a year. Options are based on the time spans you selected in the Colleges Attended section.
Select an academic status. Academic status refers to your status during the term you are inputting, not your current status. Refer to the list of Academic Status definitions below for more information.
Select a completion status. If you're entering courses for a term that is currently in progress or planned, select In Progress/Planned.
Click Save.
Continue adding terms, as needed.

Academic Status Definitions

Freshman-Senior: Applies to all college- or university-level courses taken prior to your first bachelor's degree. In general, four-year students should list one year per designation and five-year students should list their last two years as senior. Non-traditional students should label their terms as evenly as possible in chronological order.
- Dual enrollment courses (college courses taken during high school) are considered Freshman and should be listed under the college where you took them. Do not report these courses again as transfer credits at your undergraduate institution.
Post-Baccalaureate: Applies to undergraduate level courses taken after your first bachelor's degree is earned. If you earned a second bachelor's degree, that is considered post-baccalaureate.
Graduate: Applies to master's degree- and doctorate degree-level work only, regardless of whether the degree was earned. Work such as that taken in pursuit of a Ph.D, MD, PharmD, JD, JurisD, LL.D, DC., etc. are considered doctorate degree-level.

Enter a Course

Enter Courses for a Completed Term

Click Add A Course under the appropriate term.
Enter the course code. Department prefixes and course numbers must exactly match what appears on your official transcript. Some courses may populate from a drop-down that appears as you type the course. These are pre-loaded courses from ASSIST. If your course does not appear on the list, please complete the entry with the course subject and number as listed on your transcript.
Enter the course title. You can abbreviate it if it does not fit in the text box.
Select the course subject area. In most cases, it corresponds to the course subject code. This field does not default with a value. Make sure to select a subject for each course line. The system will not let you save the page without a subject identified for each course. If you are unable to find a similar subject, select the closest related subject if available. If there is no corresponding subject, select Special Topics.
Enter the course credits exactly as they appear on your transcript. See the Course Credits section below for more details.
Enter the grade exactly as it appears on your transcript, including any pluses or minuses. Refer to Cal State Apply Grade Values Chart for conversion charts, if necessary.
- If your grades are listed as "BA," "CB," or "DC," you must list them as "AB," "BC," and "CD" in order for the system to recognize them.
- If your grades are listed as numbers (e.g., 93), enter them exactly as they appear on your transcript. They will automatically convert to the equivalent CAS letter grade.
The CAS Grade populates automatically. This allows us to standardize your coursework for all programs and cannot be edited.
Click Save All.
Continue adding courses, as needed.

Enter Courses for an In-Progress or Planned Term

You should enter any courses that you are currently taking or plan to take in the near future. This is not required, but is strongly recommended, as some programs require it. Note, however, that any term containing In Progress/Planned courses cannot be marked as complete; the entire term must be marked as In Progress/Planned. Contact your programs to determine if they require planned or in-progress coursework to be listed. Once you complete in-progress courses, you can update them in the application.

Make sure that you selected In Progress/Planned for the term you're listing the course under. This alerts the system that you aren't required to enter a grade for this course.
Enter the course code.
Enter the course title. You can abbreviate it if it does not fit in the text box.
Select the course subject. If you're unsure, make your best guess.
Enter the expected course credits. Depending on the format of your credits, you may need to convert them. See the Course Credits section below for more details.
Click Save.
Continue adding courses, as needed.

Once you have added all your courses, select Yes under the Have you completed entering your transcript? question.

Enter Narrative Transcripts

Enter Repeated Courses and Academic Renewals

For admission purposes, the CSU honors the grading policies of the institution where credit was earned by accepting official transcript entries, including those reflecting academic renewal, repeat, and incomplete grades.

If you have repeated coursework, enter your coursework as described above and:

If the original attempt is excluded from the transcript GPA and you have a grade for the repeated attempt, enter "RP" for the original attempt's grade.
If the original attempt is excluded from the transcript GPA, but your repeated attempt is in progress, enter the original attempt's grade.

If your college offers academic renewal, enter your coursework as described above and enter "AR" for courses listed as academic renewal on the transcript.

Course Credits

Semester, Trimester, and Quarter Credits

If your course credits are mostly in "3.0," "4.0," or "5.0" format, then your transcript is listing normal semester, trimester, or quarter credits and no conversion is necessary. Enter the credits exactly as they appear on your transcript.

There are two box values for credit. The first is the whole credit value. The second box is for fractional credit values and defaults to 00. To change this, select a value from the drop-down. For example, a course that is 3.5 credits would have a value of 3 in the first box and then .5 in the second.

If credits automatically populate from the Course Code drop-down, double-check the values match what is listed on your transcript.

Unit Credits

If all of your course credits are listed in "1.0" or "0.50" format, then your transcript is listing credit units and you need to perform a conversion. Check the back of your transcript for a conversion ratio, which will say something like "1 unit is equivalent to 4 semester hours."

If there is no conversion on the back of your transcript, contact your registrar's office to determine the conversion ratio. Then, convert the credits by multiplying the number of units listed on your transcript by the conversion factor. For example, if your conversion is 1 unit = 4 hours and your transcript lists 1 unit for a course, you would enter 4.00 credits on your application. If 0.50 is listed, you would enter 2.00.

Review Cal State Apply Grade Value Charts to view some Canadian institutions' unit conversion ratios.

Lab Credits

Test Credits

Transferable

For each course, you must identify if the course is transferable by checking the box at the end of the course entry row. The course numbering system on the back of the transcript or in the course catalog often indicates college level- or bachelor degree-applicable courses. California Community College students can use ASSIST.org to view CSU transferability. College preparative, remedial, or vocational coursework are not transferable. If you are uncertain, check with a transfer counselor at your college. Courses entered with data populating from ASSIST will have the box checked automatically. It is important to make sure you have all courses correctly classified since transferable courses are used to calculate admission GPA.

Transfer GPA

Calculating Your GPAs

Cal State Apply uses the information you entered in the College Coursework section to calculate several GPAs, including GPAs for each institution you attended. To calculate these GPAs, each A-F or 0-100 grade you entered in the Grade field is first converted to a Cal State Apply numeric grade value, then multiplied by the attempted credits. The resulting product is Quality Points.

Your total Quality Points are then divided by your Attempted Credits to determine your GPA.

Non-graded credits are not included in your GPAs. Non-graded credits are earned credits for which you did not receive actual letter grades (e.g., advanced placement credits, "pass" or "satisfactory" credits, college board AP exams, courses taken as pass/fail, etc.). Note: a grade of WF (i.e., equivalent of a withdrawn with penalty, withdrawn failing, etc.) is factored into GPA calculations as an F.

Cal State Apply calculates all GPAs in semester hours. Courses that were completed in quarter hours are converted to semester hours. The conversion ratio is 1.0 quarter hour = 0.667 semester hours.

Once you have entered your coursework, you can view your GPA in your full application PDF.

Your Transfer GPA will be available on the College Coursework page. Once you add new coursework, click Recalculate to refresh your GPA and confirm that it is correct before submitting your application.

Example:

Course	Transcript Grade	Converted Numeric Grade Value	Attempted Credits	Calculation	Quality Points
MATH 1100	A	4	4	4 x 4	16
ENGL 1310	B	3	3	3 x 3	9
GEOL 1610	C	2	4	2 x 4	8
PHED 1000	D	1	3	1 x 3	3
PSCI 1040	F	0	3	0 x 3	0
Total			17		36
GPA Calculation: 36 (Quality Points) / 17 (Attempted Credits) = 2.12 (GPA)