OMG! What a mess!

As I was looking over my coursework (I’m 9 units away from graduating with my Bachelors in Health Science), I realized that I am missing transcripts that my school (CSUF) never received. I’m not sure if I requested them or not. The years that I spent attending the other 3 schools were such a blur (raising 2 kids on my own, husband worked out-of-state, working full-time - too much stuff to list but I hope you get it). Anyhow, I’m torn with what I’m supposed to do. Do I contact admissions and tell them that I completely forgot to send in those transcripts? Those other 3 schools that I attended I believe I got financial aid, but again, it’s been like close to 10 years so I can’t remember all the details.



What should I do? I’ve worked so hard to have it all taken away merely because I forgot to request or send in transcripts.



Any advice would be much appreciated. I hope to apply to a postbac soon, but if my undergrad degree is withdrawn, I will never be able to apply to med school ever!



Or, do I not do anything about and just include those transcripts when I apply to the postbac program? I don’t want to lie, I just want to be able to fix this because I sincerely forgot about those courses that I took (I took undergrad courses for paralegal studies, then accounting, and finally criminal justice)… I just couldn’t figure what I wanted to do because I really thought I was just too old for med school until I found out about OPM.



Freaking out,

SM3

If they weren’t part of your undergrad program, it probably doesn’t matter as far as med school applications go. You just need to have 90+ credits (read: degree). You definitely need to include the courses/transcripts on any follow-on program to which you apply, but I think you’re okay to not add them to your degree-granting program if you don’t want/need the credits to graduate. It probably doesn’t hurt to add those credits to your degree if the school will accept the transfer credits. Best case is you only have electives remaining and they count, saving you money in the end. (just my opinion, don’t really have a solid answer).



Bottom-line is that the med school application systems bounce your courses off of a national database and will know if you’re not including credits on your application that you have taken.

Well, I just ordered the transcripts and will have to face whatever consequences there may be. At the end of the day, it was a sincere mistake that I made and by no means was I intending to hide my grades - I simply did not think about it because I really thought it had nothing to do with my general ed for undergrad, so why include it? I will just take this as a very, very tough learning experience. All in all, I feel better about being honest rather than hiding this and always having to worry whether or not someone is going to find out later down the line and have my degree revoked.