Grades
If you have recently returned to the U.S. after your semester abroad, welcome home! If you are planning or continuing your travels or studies abroad, we wish you every success.
This FAQ is intended to give you an explanation of how and when academic records from your time abroad are reported. Please read all of the following information carefully:
Q: What can I do to help get my grades processed more quickly?
A: As much as possible, please refrain from contacting the CIEE Portland office to check on the progress of your grades, unless your grades are not recorded at your home institution within three months of the end date of your program. We truly appreciate your cooperation in this regard, since the fewer inquiries we receive, the more quickly we can process your grades and forward them to your home institution.
Q: Whom should I contact about any grade-related questions?
A: The CIEE Registration Coordinators and the Manager of Billing & Registration are the only people who are authorized to release student’s final grades, and no grades will be released via phone or email. Any inquiries about grades—either before or after they have been reported—must be directed to the CIEE Registration Coordinators (registrar@ciee.org, or via the contact information below), rather than to the resident staff overseas. Please be sure to include the term, year, and program name in the subject line of any email message you send. The overseas staff will not have the most up-to-date information about the status of your grades, so please only contact the Registration Coordinators in the CIEE Portland office with your questions.
Q: How does the grade reporting process work?
A: Upon completion of your program, CIEE resident staff automatically send final grade reports, along with other supporting documentation from the host institution, to the CIEE Portland, Maine office. A CIEE Academic Record (CAR) is then created, issued, and forwarded to your sending institution. The CAR, approved by the CIEE Academic Consortium, lists each course title, along with the language of instruction, hours of instruction, recommended semester hours of credit and suggested U.S. grade equivalency. In addition, each CAR is accompanied by an academic guide that includes detailed information on the host institution, admissions requirements, nature of the courses offered at that location, the academic calendar, and a grade conversion chart (when applicable).
Q: How long will it take for my grades to be processed?
A: Students’ home institutions normally receive final grades from CIEE approximately 10 to 12 weeks after the program ending date. Please be aware, however, that some sites take much longer to report grades to the CIEE Portland office. This is primarily the case for programs with direct enrollment courses (e.g. but not limited to Amsterdam, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Seville), due to the fact that collection of these final grades depends on local institutions and their individual grade reporting procedures. You will not be sent a copy of your CAR or grades from CIEE, since it is your home institution or School of Record that designates whether (and how) your credits and grades will transfer.
If you participated on the program through Spelman College as your School of Record, please note that it typically takes an additional 1-2 weeks for your grades to be processed and forwarded to your home school because CIEE sends the CAR to Spelman who then has to create and send an official transcript for you. As a service to you, Spelman College will send an official copy of your transcript to your permanent address at the same time that they send the official copy to your home school, since the recorded grades with Spelman are an official record of your study abroad. Please keep in mind that if you open that transcript copy it will no longer be considered “official”.
Q: What happens after CIEE Portland sends the grade report to my US sending school?
A: After receiving the CAR, information is entered onto the transcript at your home institution per their own policies and procedures—or onto the transcript offered through CIEE’s School of Record (SOR), Spelman College, if you applied to the program requesting to study through an SOR—and this becomes the official record of your participation in a CIEE program. Please keep in mind that your US sending school ultimately determines how credits and grades are counted and transfer in to their system.
Q: What if I still owe money to CIEE for my program fees or for a debt I incurred while on my program that went unpaid after I returned to the US?
A: CIEE Academic Records are not released to home schools when participants have outstanding financial obligations to the CIEE Portland office or to the program site. If you owe any funds to CIEE, you will be sent a bill for those outstanding fees to your Emergency/Billing Contact address shortly after the debt is reported to the Portland office. In many cases, these debts are reported prior to CIEE Portland’s receipt of the grade reports to allow you time to make the payment in full before the grades are fully processed, so you can avoid any delays in having your grades sent to your home school. Any balance must be paid in full (with cleared funds) to the CIEE Portland, Maine office for grades to be released.
Q: How can I request a copy of my transcript?
A: Requests for transcripts reflecting credit earned should be made to your home institution, or your School of Record. Occasionally, participants require copies of their CIEE Academic Record for graduate school or scholarship applications. For details on how to request copies of your CIEE Academic Record, after grades have been reported at your home institution: please go to “Request a Transcript”.
Q: Who is my CIEE Registration Coordinator?
A: For programs in Europe and the Middle East: Carol McCurry. For programs in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America: Tod VanZandt.