uAchieve Transfer Articulation Project Introduction

If you took Advanced Placement (AP) exams in high school, transferred institutions, studied abroad or took courses in another institution as an undergraduate student, then you have gone through a transfer credit process and know the intricacies required to have your coursework or exams evaluated. At UC San Diego, the uAchieve Transfer Articulation (UTA) Project will streamline academic credit transfers. 

uAchieve History

The uAchieve system was initially implemented at UC San Diego for degree audits only. You can read more about the history of uAchieve in the uAchieve archived webpage. Most recently, the Division of Extended Studies (DES) adopted uAchieve, which made degree audits available for students completing DES certificate programs. This new project is expanding uAchieve functionality to include transfer articulation (TA). 

The UTA Project kicked off in 2021 and is ongoing. An implementation team and advisory committee have been involved in the project since the initiation of the uAchieve Project and now with a focus on TA. You can see the members involved in the uAchieve Transfer Articulation webpage. 

From Approximations to Transfer Articulation 

Presently, the credit rules managed through the current student information system (known as ISIS) are approximations. The ISIS process is manual, cumbersome and not transparent to students. By using the TA module in uAchieve, we are expanding the capabilities of uAchieve and providing better service to our students. 

The new process will provide more transparency to students and advisors. It will display all courses, regardless of UC transferability. The courses that are not eligible for transfer to UC San Diego degree requirements will be clearly marked within uAchieve. 

Completed Work

The UTA Project began with a data-driven approach to encode transfer rules for our top transfer institutions and transfer work. AP represents the largest volume of transfer work for our incoming students. To date, AP transfer rules have been entered and thoroughly tested in the TA module. The UTA implementation team has also encoded transfer rules for the top 250 feeder institutions. Feeder institutions are determined as a top feeder based on the number of students transferring from those institutions including California Community Colleges and other common transfer institutions. With AP and the top 250 feeder institutions alone, this represents more than 340,000 rules entered over the last three years. 

Current Work 

Within the last year, a decision was made not to integrate UTA with ISIS and instead to focus efforts into the implementation of this project with our new SIS. The target go-live date for this project is still to be determined along with the implementation of the Triton Student System (TSS). 

The UTA implementation team is currently focusing on:

• Syncing new rules from ISIS to UTA
• Mapping future state business process
• Testing of the transfer articulation rules results
• Establishing a timeline for implementation

Future Work 

There will be other working and testing phases for other transfer work including: 

• Advanced Level (A-level) foreign examinations 
• University of California Education Abroad Program (UCEAP) 
• Transfer work from other academic institutions 
• International Baccalaureate (IB) 

The UTA implementation team is working with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions to define next steps, including testing for the top 250 feeder school rules. The transfer rules will continue to be updated over the next few months as approximations are changed to ensure the rules are current when the time comes to integrate UTA with the new TSS. 

We look forward to leveraging uAchieve to provide a clear and transparent TA process that supports students in understanding how transfer work and courses taken at other institutions transfer to UC San Diego and how they apply toward their degree requirements. To stay informed, subscribe to the monthly newsletter for ESR Student Information System Project updates that includes the UTA Project and check the uAchieve Transfer Articulation webpage.