The SUNY Online Academic Record: Everything You Need to Know
This year, SUNY has rolled out the SUNY Online Academic Record (SOAR), a system where students self-report their grades instead of sending a transcript and SAT score reports. This will cut down on processing time, postage fees, lost records, and trees destroyed; it will also take you a good hour to complete and is really, really tedious. The good news is that once you’ve completed it, your SUNY schools will have instantaneous access to your academic history, and those schools with rolling admissions will be able to offer you a decision even faster. **Stony Brook and Binghamton are using the STARS system for one more year, so students applying to those schools must also fill out a separate academic report. Sorry!**
Even though Mr. Frick is still going to scan your transcript in as part of his counselor’s report on the SUNY Counselor Connect, this is the way that SUNY is going to look at your grades. YOU are the one looking at your transcript and entering the grades, and the most frequent question is: What’s to stop people from lying?
There is absolutely no point in lying about your grades. Your school WILL require an official transcript eventually, and should they find out you that lied on your SOAR, you will have your acceptance rescinded from ALL SUNY schools. There is NO point in screwing yourself over this way.
**SUNY will not reject you for a typo; you will be putting a cumulative GPA and all your scores in, so if something doesn’t add up, SUNY will contact Mr. Frick and will correct any mistakes that way.**
If you are applying to SUNY schools via the Common App, you will need your Common App ID number, and you should see Mr. Frick, as logging into SOAR is a bit different. Everything you will read below is the same, though.
In order to begin SOAR, go to your SUNY Portal homepage on ApplySUNY and click on the box to the right:
The first thing you will see is an agreement telling you that there is no point in lying on the SOAR. Click “Close and no longer show this message.”
The first thing you will be asked is to input is the information about your high school. You can search for MVA in the box at the bottom by name or just put in its CEEB code, which is 333791. Mr. Frick will have provided you a transcript with your rank and cumulative GPA, and you should input this information. Your GPA and rank are both UNWEIGHTED.
Our class size is now 99, NOT 105!
If you are wondering how many credits you have, or your cumulative GPA, look at the bottom right-hand corner of your transcript:
Next, you will be asked to add an academic year. Start from 9th grade, 2008 – 2009. This will include Summer Bridge!
**You will indicate that it was your 9th grade year, BUT YOU WILL NOT ENTER A GPA! MVA does GPA by semester, but it does NOT give you a GPA for each individual academic year!**
You will then click “Add Course.” You must add the course for both the fall and spring semesters, so essentially you are going to create the same entry twice: one for fall, with its grade; one for spring, with its grade. Here’s how each course entry breaks down:
Subject: English, Mathematics, History…
Course: **Choose in drop-down menu what sounds like best fit**
Exact Course Title: **Write in EXACTLY how it is written on transcript! It doesn’t matter how abreviated or strange!**
Course Level: Regular; Regents Prep for Algebra, Living Environment, Earth Science, Geometry, Global History II, Trig, 11th Grade English, and US History; and AP for Calculus, US History, and English (if you are enrolled in these courses)
Course Length: FALL or SPRING
Credits: 1.0 for all regular classes; 0.6 for gym; 0.0 for advisory, service learning, and health.
Grading System: 1-100
Grade: **Scroll down and select your grade. Round up or down depending on whether it’s above/below .50**
What one course entry might look like.
If it’s on your transcript, you MUST input it. Service Learning, Service Learning, Health, and a few others might be a bit hard to figure out; you should put “other” for both subject and course, and enter your grade as “Pass/Fail–Pass.” Here is an example 9th grade year on a transcript:
And here are sample course inputs Service Learning and Health in 9th grade:
You will continue to input everything that is written on your transcript until you complete a whole year, which will something like this:
Once you finish inputing your first three years, you will have to put in the courses in which you are currently enrolled as a 12th grader. Do this the same way, but for your grade, select “In progress.” This way the SUNY school will know what courses you’re taking this year!
After you have put in your entire academic history, the rest is pretty straight forward. First, input your Regents scores:
And next, your SAT scores–which you should choose to report via SOAR “now”, not later by another method!
Afterward, it will look like this:
You can indicate that you’re taking the SATs in November or December, but this does NOT mean SAT Subject Tests! The same goes for the ACT.
Finally, you will be asked to review, lock and submit. This is your chance to go back and make sure all your info is accurate! You CANNOT change this once submitted, so be sure!
Whoops!
If you have questions, please see Mr. Frick or email him; do NOT rush through this! Give yourself an hour to sit down, fill everything out, and then save so that you can come back and make sure everything is okay before submitting.
