Around this time of the semester, students and faculty are working together across the St. John Fisher campus to create a plan for course registration. Because the University requires students to meet with advisors during this period, many rely on this meeting as their sole planning time. However, there are multiple resources available for Fisher students to understand their requirements and explore their options before the advising meeting.

Among the lesser utilized resources is uAchieve, which can be accessed through the launchpad. As a program, uAchieve is a program designed to audit degrees based on specific school, major, and minor requirements. The program connects with the Registrar’s Office to show students credits completed, needed, and planned. Here are some of the different degree audits students can run with uAchieve’s automated system:

• Traditional Degree Audit

This is the most well-known audit in uAchieve’s program. When a student enters the program, they should already have at least one degree audit in the system. Typically, this audit is completed by the Registrar’s Office, and will give a basic idea of degree requirements sectioned off into different needs. At any time after gaining access to uAchieve, a student can run an audit on their own time. This will automatically be based on the information the Registrar’s Office has been provided with in terms of transcripts and declared majors/minors. If courses are taken elsewhere, students must wait for the Registrar’s Office to manually accept them in order to see them represented in an Audit. 

• “What-If” Audit

Should a student wish to see what requirements they might have to complete if they were to make a change to their declared program, they can run a “what-if” audit. To do so, go to the normal audit and click the drop-down menu called “Select a Different Program.” From there, students can imagine how long their degree would take to complete if they switched majors/minors, or even added a certificate. 

• Plan Audit

Finally, and perhaps most helpful during registration, students can run a plan audit to select future classes and see each semester of their degree lined up. By going into the “plan” section of uAchieve, students can create various potential plans to see different avenues they could take. It is worth noting that students will not always know which classes will be offered when, but the plan allows a quick reference that can be changed at will. Once courses have been placed into the correct semester, click the checkmark button to save the plan and see if it fulfills requirements.

As a bonus to what uAchieve offers, students are encouraged to use all the resources at their disposal. Associate Director of Academic Advising Matt Lake sees advisors as a GPS system that helps to guide students on their academic road and get them where they want to end up. However, Lake says the best way to navigate this road is by using all resources in tandem: meeting with advisors, checking uAchieve, and using Academic Pathways that can be found here. As advising meetings are often brief, being a skilled self-advocate can ensure a productive and easy meeting.