The Transcript Reader reads the transcripts your applicants submit, pulls out the course-level data, applies your office's rules, calculates the GPA and other values you need, and writes the results back to each student's record. It replaces opening each transcript, keying in courses, and recalculating a GPA by hand, and it can process batches of thousands of transcripts at a time.
How it works
Every transcript goes through the same five steps.
Ingest. The transcript file arrives from your system through the asset sync, along with an index file that maps each document to a student (unique ID, asset type, and file name). Transcripts come in many formats. The Transcript Reader handles PDFs, scans, and files from platforms like Parchment or SCOIR, using a blend of OCR and generative AI.
Extract. The Transcript Reader reads even unstructured or inconsistent layouts and pulls out the school name, each course with its grade, credits, and level (for example Honors, AP, IB), the grade year and term, and, when the transcript shows them, the printed GPA, class rank, class size, graduation date, and degree earned.
Classify. Each course is classified as counting or not counting toward a GPA calculation, based on your rules. For example, only core academic courses, or only grades 9 through 11.
Calculate. The GPA and any other values are calculated with your formula and scale.
Return. Results are written to the student record in CollegeVine and flow back to your CRM or other designated system.
What it can calculate
Calculations follow your institution's rules, not a generic formula. Examples:
A custom GPA that matches your internal calculation
Weighted and unweighted GPAs
Course-specific GPAs, such as math or science only
Course counts, such as the number of AP or honors courses
State-specific index scores
See "How the GPA calculation is built" below.
What you get back
On the student record. The GPA and any other fields you requested, plus the extracted transcript data. Each record also shows the list of courses that were included and the list that were excluded, with a reason for each exclusion.
In your CRM. The same fields can be ingested into your CRM. See How will I receive the outputs from the Transcript Reader?
Course by course, in Slate. If you use Slate, you can also receive one row per course. See Exporting course-level data [Slate API].
In the workflow dashboard. Reporting lives within the transcript processing workflow itself. A dashboard shows the transcript PDFs, what was extracted from them, and any flags. See Monitoring transcript processing.
A standard set of output fields covers most schools. Additional fields can be added at any point, based on what your office needs. Examples include:
Course counts by subject or by year (for example, math courses, or courses taken in grade 11)
The highest math or science course taken
Flags for your review criteria, such as a grade of D or below, no foreign language, or a math requirement not met
A student's GPA trend across their high school years
Good to know
The printed GPA is for reference. A transcript's printed GPA often differs from your office's recalculation, because the school used its own rules. A gap between the two is expected and is not an error.
Low confidence is flagged, not dropped. If the Transcript Reader is not confident about how it classified a course or read a grade, the record is flagged for review. Nothing is silently left out.
More than one transcript per student. See How does the Transcript Reader handle multiple transcripts?
Which transcripts it handles
CollegeVine supports transcript processing for a variety of use cases - domestic high school, international, graduate, transfers. When building your agent, we recommend starting with domestic high school transcripts first and then moving onto other populations.
For international transcripts, see How does transcript processing work for international transcripts?
Getting started
Connect your systems. Two syncs are needed: the constituent sync, so a student record exists, and the asset sync, so each transcript matches the right student. See How do I set up the Transcript Reader integration?
Discovery session. After kickoff, we meet to understand how your office calculates GPA, which courses and grades count, and which values you want back.
Sign off on the rules. We document the calculation and every output field in a Rules and Output Specification for your review and approval before go-live.
Test batch. You submit a random sample of about 100 transcripts. We process them and return the results.
Review and adjust. We refine the calculation, extracted fields, and output columns together until the results match what you expect.
How the GPA calculation is built
CollegeVine builds your GPA from four building blocks, then adjusts them to match your method.
Courses included. Which courses from the transcript count, for example all courses, academic courses only, or academic plus AP/IB.
Grades included. Whether the calculation uses every grade on the transcript or a subset, such as the last six semesters or excluding middle school.
GPA formula. The scale the result is calculated on:
4-point scale: traditional 0 to 4.0
Percentage scale: 0 to 100
Specialized formula: custom systems such as percentage with credit bonuses, or unweighted course averaging
Mapping and weighting. The details of the formula:
Letter grade mapping: converts letter grades (A, B, C) to numerical values
Percentage grade mapping: converts percentage grades to scale points using thresholds
Course weighting: adds bonus points for advanced courses (AP, IB, Honors)