Official transcripts are documents that are produced by the registrar's office and must be ordered according to the instructions on the Official Transcript page. Whether issued as secure .pdf documents or printed on blue tamper proof security paper, official transcripts are important to third parties so that they can be assured of authenticity (originating directly from CWRU) and content accuracy. Official transcripts are issued in portrait format and contain the seal of the university and the signature of the University Registrar.
Unofficial transcripts are available to current students via self-service from the Student Information System. (See Viewing Unofficial Transcript.) They are a means by which students may review their academic record and are generated in landscape format. There are content differences between an unofficial transcript and an official transcript. Some differences only appear on certain careers (i.e., levels at which student records are aggregated such as Undergraduate, Graduate, Law, etc.) while others are universal across all careers at the University.
Transfer Credit
On all careers, course by course details of external transfer credit—credit that is transferred into CWRU from another school—appear on the unofficial transcript, but on an official transcript only the school from which the credit was transferred, the CWRU program to which the transfer credit was applied, and the total number of hours accepted at CWRU will appear.
Academic Standing
Academic standing statements appear after the cumulative statistics for the term to which they apply. Whether these statements appear on the unofficial or official transcripts vary by career. For undergraduate students, Ineligible to Register, Probation Incomplete, Probation Incomplete Resolved, and Re-eligible to Register only appear on the unofficial transcript. These statements will not appear on the official transcript. Students in the School of Graduate Studies will not see academic standing statements on the official transcript. These statements only appear on the unofficial transcript. Students in the School of Law will see all academic standing statements except Academic Warning on both their official and unofficial transcripts. The Academic Warning statement does not appear on either transcript.
Milestones
Milestones are statements which may appear at the end of each career's record. The transcript type on which milestones appear also vary by career. Students in the School of Graduate Studies will see all milestones except Final Oral Defense and Waiver of Registration on both the official and unofficial transcripts. The Final Oral Defense and Waiver of Registration milestones only appear on the unofficial transcript. Students in the Law School will see the Substance Abuse Training milestone only on unofficial transcript. It does not print on the official transcript.