What an Unofficial
Transcript and an Official Transcript Mean and what they can Be Used For
Having
to explain to clients the meaning and uses of unofficial transcript and of official
transcript is one of the things we steadily encounter per day, it’s almost like
travel agents/PR and schools aren’t explaining enough what they mean when they
ask travel aspirants to provide their unofficial or official transcript. But
this is Pathfinders Edu. Consultancy (PEC), part of our jobs is to enlighten
people who may be needing such, and the fact that this write-up caught your
interest and retains your attention till this line can only mean that this
topic we are about to discuss means so much to you. Trust us to give you the
best of information anytime. Now let’s talk about what unofficial transcript
and an official transcript mean and what we can use the two for.
Unofficial
Transcript: an
unofficial transcript is your own copy of your transcript and any other kind of
transcript held by a body it was not addressed to. You can have your transcript
sent to you by email or by courier (paper), but so long it’s you the owner they
are addressing it to, then it is totally an unofficial transcript. Also, if your
transcript was addressed to and sent to, for example, University of Lagos by
University of Ibadan, but you go to University of Lagos to retrieve it and then
send it to Obafemi Awolowo University, such transcript is only official to
UNILAG but not to OAU. So don’t mind people who think their transcript is still
official when they us this method in getting their transcript. Yes “official”
can be written on the transcript because it is meant to be official to UNILAG,
but when it gets to OAU, the fact that it’s not addressed to OAU alone makes it
unofficial to OAU. If you have any institution that collects this kind of transcript
as official transcript, the implication is that they do not know what official transcript
means. Recently, the use of an unofficial transcript is popular in seeking for postgraduate
admissions and scholarships, and mostly, when the admission or scholarship has
been offered provisionally, they would ask for your official transcript.
Official
Transcript: when
you are asked to provide your official transcript, just know they are asking
you to ask your school you graduated from to send them your transcript directly;
it could be sent via email, or via courier or uploaded to their portal, but the
sending and uploading can only be done by your school and done directly to the
people or institution needing you to provide your official transcript. Note
that an official transcript doesn’t depend on whether it is an association you
are sending it to or an organisation or another tertiary institution or an
employer, just know that so long the recipient is not you and the document is
received by the body your school addresses it to, then it is an official
transcript. A lot of people think if they request for their transcript from
their school asking them to send it to a body, it would be an official copy,
and they can collect it from that body and send it to another body requesting
for their official transcript and it would still be official to them. Only one
part of this thinking is right, the other is wrong; if you use the name of a
body to request for your transcript and your school addresses it to that body
and sends it to them, yes it is an official transcript to them, but when you
retrieve it from that body (and open it or not), and then send it to another
body which it is not addressed to, it is not an official copy to the that body.
Official copy of a transcript simply means it is confidential between your
school and the receiver to whom it is addressed and it is sent to. The uses of
official transcript are formal; graduate schools ask for official transcripts
when they have offered you a provisional admission and they need to be sure the
unofficial transcript you used to seek for the admission is authentic.
Employers ask for official transcript too, in fact these ones now prefer an official
transcript to the certificate you submit to them; this is because you can
render a fake certificate, but your school wouldn’t want to send them a fake
transcript. Beside, your transcript gives more details about your activities
while you were in school. Evaluation bodies only take official transcripts;
only your school can send it to them directly and it must be addressed to them
and sealed.
I
hope you have now a better understanding of what official transcript and an unofficial
transcript means. If you do not, you can reach out to us on +2348139534187 or info@pecngr.com for better talk on this
topic. Knowing what you need would guide you through knowing how to work towards
getting it, and might save you a lot of money and time.
People
who read this also have interest in reading this:
Why Most OAU Transcripts Don’t Get Sent Ever or Get Sent But Several Months After Applying
No comments:
Post a Comment