Academic Requirements Report FAQ's

The ARR is the graduation evaluation tool used by the campus to award degrees. Students should run this report often to guarantee completion of all graduation requirements. For more information visit ARR or watch the video tutorial found on the left under How-To Guides.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What does ARR stand for?
   Academic Requirements Report – this is the Graduation Evaluation tool used by the campus to confer degrees. It lists all of your degree requirements needed to complete your bachelor’s degree. It starts with overall totals required to graduate and other university general degree requirements, then lists general education requirements, and finally, all major and minor requirements.
• Why do the total units and GPA have yellow diamonds when they appear to be complete?
  They will remain yellow diamonds until all requirements and courses are complete with final grades.
• I completed a requirement but now it is showing "In-Progress"?

  I completed a requirement but now it is showing "In-Progress" with a different course, why does it show as not completed now?

  The ARR assumes that “In-Progress” grades will be an A (for programming reasons) and applies it to the requirement if the first course was less than an A.

• I completed a requirement with a D grade in a course. Why is it "In Progress"?

  I completed a requirement with a D grade in a course. I am repeating the course but now the requirements shows "In-Progress" rather than completed, why?

  The ARR assumes an A grade for the “In-Progress” course, a higher grade than previously achieved.  Many of the ARR requirements are set up to use the highest grade of a class. Since the “In-Progress” grade is seen as an A it will place that attempt into the ARR requirement. If you do not complete the repeat attempt or achieve a lower grade than the first attempt, the ARR will use the first attempt again to complete the requirement.

• All of my transfer courses appear to be taken the same semester, why is that?
  Transfer courses show the semester they were transferred into your CSUSM record and not the semester you took them.
• Some of my transfer courses have code names like TRAN 1XX. What are these courses?

  Some of my transfer courses have real course names and numbers and others have different code names like TRAN 1XX. What are these courses?

  These are transfer courses that do not have an exact match at CSUSM. TRAN means this is a transfer course and 1XX means it is a lower-division course.

• Why do my transfer courses have different names and numbers?

  Why do my transfer courses have different names and numbers lissted on the ARR than what is printed on my transfer college transcript?

  These transfer courses have comparable courses at CSUSM and show in the ARR with the CSUSM course number and name.

• I have a course on my ARR that has 400 instead of a letter grade, what does this mean?
  Grades like this are when more than one transfer course is required to be the equivalent to one CSUSM course.  The number grades are then averaged together.
• Why does one of my major course list 6 courses required but there are 8 courses listed?

  In one of my major course lists it indicates 6 courses are required but there are 8 courses in the list. Which course am I supposed to take?

  Generally a required course list shows the exact number of courses needed except when there are are co-listed courses. These are courses that are offered by two departments.  Example: PSCI 343 and WMST 343 are the same course offered by two departments. You only take one of them to complete the requirement. They do not always have the same course number but the titles will be the same or very similar.

• Why does one of my major requirements have 13 courses required but there are 10 listed?

  In one of my major requirements it indicates 13 courses are required but there are only 10 courses in the list. Where are the other courses?

  In the last row of that set of courses click the VIEW ALL link.  This will expand the list to include the full list of courses.