Grades and Transcripts

A: Upon completion of your program, CIEE center staff send final grade reports, along with an official transcript from the host institution when available, to the CIEE United States office. A CIEE Academic Record (CAR) or School of Record (SOR) transcript is then created, issued, and forwarded to your home institution, along with any documentation from the host institution, when available. The CAR 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).

Final authority for awarding of credit from your term(s) abroad rests with the appropriate authority at your home institution or School of Record (SOR) for each approved term of study. Once credit is awarded, the home institution (or SOR) transcript becomes the official permanent record of your program participation.

You will not be sent a copy of your CAR. Once your official grades and credits have been sent to your home school or SOR, you can access them online in your CIEE My Account by clicking the “View” button next to ‘Course Registration & Grades’ within the ‘Course Information’ section; this section will only appear when your grades are available.

Checking your CIEE My Account is a quick and easy way to determine the status of your grades and credits and should be the first thing you check to determine whether grades have been sent to your home school.

A: Students’ home schools typically receive final grades from CIEE approximately 12 weeks* after the official program end date**. While we understand students are eager to receive their final grades, we ask that you refrain from contacting CIEE to check on the progress of your grades unless they have not been recorded at your home school within 12 weeks of your program end date. The fewer inquiries we receive, the more quickly we can process your grades and forward them to your home school.

*Please note: Some sites take much longer, primarily some programs offering host university courses, since collection of these final grades depends on local institutions and their individual grade reporting procedures. (e.g., but not limited to, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Gaborone, London, Madrid, Paris, Seville, and Toulouse)

If you are participating in more than one session (summer) or block (fall or spring), your processing window begins at the end of your latest session or block, as all grades will be processed together.

**If you participated on your program through CIEE’s School of Record, Tulane University, grades processing typically takes an additional 3 weeks. CIEE sends the CIEE Academic Record to Tulane University, who then creates and sends an official transcript to your home institution. As a service to you, Tulane University will send an official copy of your transcript to your permanent address once they send an official copy to your home school, since the recorded grades with Tulane University are an official record of your study abroad. (To determine whether you are a School of Record student, review “My Submitted Materials” within your CIEE My Account to see if you completed the “School of Record Waiver” task.)

A: After receiving the CIEE Academic Record, 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), 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 regardless of whether your home school receives the CAR or SOR transcript, your home school ultimately determines whether or how credits and grades are counted and transfer into their system.

A: CIEE Academic Records are not released* when participants have outstanding financial or administrative obligations to the CIEE United States Office or to the program site. If you owe any funds to CIEE, you will be sent a bill for those outstanding fees via your online account shortly after the debt is reported to the CIEE U.S. office. In many cases, these debts are reported prior to CIEE’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 to the CIEE U.S. Office and any outstanding paperwork must be submitted for grades to be released to home schools or any other recipient. (*The home schools of students who fail more than 50% of attempted coursework will be notified of their failure to pass all their courses and may be sent a preliminary copy of the grade report, regardless of any outstanding obligations to CIEE, but the official grade report will not be released to the student or home school until the obligations are met.)

A: CIEE Registration team members are the only people authorized to release student’s final grades, and no grades can 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 team, rather than to overseas staff or otherwise. Overseas staff will not have the most up-to-date information about the status of your grades; additionally, grades listed in Canvas are not considered “final” and are subject to change, so please contact only the CIEE Registration team with your questions. Please be sure to include the term, year, and program name in the subject line of any email message you send. Center staff will forward any requests related to grades directly to the CIEE Registration team.

Students wishing to appeal a reported grade, following the end of the term of study, may do so by requesting the CIEE Grade Appeal forms from their CIEE Registration Coordinator or by contacting registrar@ciee.org. The process will require adequate documentation to support the argument, and that the requested resolution is submitted in the appeal.

Following policies that are universally in effect in U.S. colleges and universities, CIEE believes that, except in rare cases of administrative error, egregious discrimination, or blatant unfairness, each instructor has the final authority, in alignment with CIEE Academic Policies and Standards, as to the means of assessment and methods of evaluation for work submitted by the students in his or her classes.

If students want to appeal the grade for a host institution course, they must first avail themselves of any appeal processes available through the host institution. For CIEE-administered classes, or host institution classes where there is no local grade appeal process available, students have three months from when grades are published in their CIEE online accounts to file an appeal with CIEE.

Students may only appeal to the CIEE Registrar’s office after the end of the program (not to local staff or professors). CIEE does not release final grades to students or home schools when there is a financial or an administrative grade hold on the student’s account.

If a student has a grade hold for any reason, CIEE will not consider the student’s request for a Grade Inquiry or to file a Grade Appeal until the hold has been resolved, and students with holds have no more than 5 months from the advertised program end date to resolve the hold and submit a grade appeal. The decisions of the Academic Appeals Committee are final once an appeal has been fully adjudicated. Please note that appeals may take at least 2-3 months to be fully adjudicated, though CIEE makes every attempt to process any appeals received as soon as possible. CIEE will not consider requests for exceptions to the appeal submission timeline.

This page and these directions are intended for CIEE college- level study abroad students. For high school program information, please visit the High School Study Abroad page.

A: The request process differs, depending on the type of grade report your CIEE program application indicated you should receive:

1. If you participated on the program through CIEE’s School of Record (SOR), you may request additional copies of your official transcript from the School of Record directly. Approximately 10% of CIEE students participate via SOR. To determine whether you are an SOR student, review “My Submitted Materials” within your CIEE My Account to see if you completed the “School of Record Waiver” task or contact CIEE at registrar@ciee.org before contacting the schools below). Students whose home schools did not identify that the SOR transcript was required on the student’s original program application are not eligible to request retroactive enrollment as an SOR student.

2. SOR students studying either on CIEE college Study Abroad from Fall 2016 to present, or on High School Study Abroad Global Navigator Summer Language & Culture programs starting in Summer 2016: Contact Tulane University here to request a copy of your Tulane University transcript.

3. SOR students who studied on CIEE college Study Abroad programs between Spring 2004 and Summer 2016: Contact Spelman College to request a copy of your Spelman College transcript.

4. If you participated on the program as a CIEE Academic Record student, were a School of Record participant from earlier than Spring 2004) or participated through a CIEE program as an Autonomous student, you may submit a request through Parchment. 

Order Academic Records

CIEE has partnered with Parchment to order and send your CIEE Academic Record securely. PDF academic records produced using this service contain identical information to the printed record and can be certified as unaltered by uploading the file to the Parchment website that is provided during the delivery process.

Parchment Inc. has been granted the authority to deliver all such electronic academic record requests on behalf of CIEE and respond to any inquiries regarding these transactions.

Once you submit a CIEE Academic Record request for an official record, we will provide the following to the institution requested:

• An official copy of your CIEE Academic Record (CAR)
• A CAR guide that includes a grading rubric (for programs from fall 2000 -present)
• A letter of explanation to accompany the CAR

The timelines below reflect the maximum amount of time it will take for your request to be processed by CIEE.

CIEE College Study Abroad Alumni Academic Record Processing Times and Transcript Fees

While CIEE administered your study abroad program, your home institution officially grants the credits earned on the program toward your degree program, and as such they issue the official transcript of record for your study abroad experience. CIEE Academic Record copies include a letter of explanation and are generally accepted as supplemental, detailed documentation to your home school transcript.

Note that to obtain an official grade report for courses taken through a host university abroad, you will need to request that record directly from the host university. CIEE does not provide copies of original host institution documents. For students who took both CIEE-administered and host institution courses, and who are required to provide an official host institution document, this may mean that you will need to request a copy of your CIEE Academic Record and a copy of the official transcript from your host institution to provide documentation of all courses taken abroad, since CIEE-administered courses are not reported on host institution transcripts.