Sessions & Coursework

Before You Begin

You must complete the Colleges Attended section before you can enter your courses. You must also obtain the DPD Course List form from your DPD director. This form lists all your DPD program's coursework requirements and should be used as a guide while completing this section.

Requirements

List only DPD-related coursework in this section. Do not list non-DPD-related courses such as Intro to Public Speaking, etc. Refer to the DPD Course List form provided by your DPD director if you are unsure about a course.
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 and add a school to enter the transfer credits for.

Enter a Session

Click Add New Session.
Select the school from the drop-down.
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 term.
Select a term type. This refers to the type of hours your credits are calculated in. For example, if your credits are in semester hours, the term is a semester. Note that completed terms should never be reported in units as they will not properly factor into your GPA. If you have questions about your credits, consult the back of your transcripts or contact your registrar.
Select the year in which the term began.
Indicate whether the course is Completed or is Planned/In-Progress.
Click Save to add your courses.

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 the course title. You can abbreviate it if it does not fit in the text box.
Enter the course prefix and number exactly as they appear on your official transcript.
If the course was repeated at the same institution, indicate whether this was the final attempt.
Select the course type.
Select the number of credit hours earned. This should match exactly what appears on your official transcript. See the Course Credits section below for more details.
Indicate whether the grade that appears for this course on your transcript is in letter (e.g., B) or numeric (e.g., 80) format.
Then, use the Transcript Grade drop-downs to select your grade. This should match exactly what appears on your official transcript. If your grade doesn't appear in the list, you can include its equivalent (e.g., if "DR" on your transcript means "Withdrawn," select "W."). If you did not receive a grade due to the COVID-19 pandemic, select Other; however, this course will not be included in any GPA calculations.
The DICAS Grade populates automatically. This allows us to standardize your coursework for all programs and cannot be edited.
Select the DPD classification that best describes the course content. If you aren't sure, check with your DPD director.
If this course has any special classification (e.g., Advanced Placement, Study Abroad, etc.), select it from the drop-down list. Most courses do not have a special classification in which case you should select Not Applicable. You can select COVID-19 to indicate the course was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic; however, this course will not be included in any GPA calculations.
Click Save.
Click Add Course to continue adding courses to this session. Once you have entered your courses for the first term, click Add New Session to add a new term. Do not list all your courses under one term if you attended multiple terms.

Course Credits

Semester, Trimester, and Quarter Credits

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 DICAS Grade Value Charts to view some Canadian institutions' unit conversion ratios.

Lab Credits

Narrative Transcripts

If your institution uses a narrative transcript, enter your coursework as described above. If the transcript lists "suggested" credits and/or grades, be sure to enter those as well; otherwise, list the course credits as "0.0" and the grades as "Credit."

These courses will not factor into your GPA, but your programs will see the list of classes you took, along with a copy of the official narrative transcript that you submit.

Foreign Coursework

Enter foreign coursework under the foreign institution attended. This section is optional.

DICAS understands that it can be difficult to obtain documentation for foreign coursework and therefore does not require transcripts or foreign evaluations; however, we strongly recommend sending an English-translated or foreign coursework evaluation to DICAS as certain programs may want to review these documents.