Senior Columnist

With commencement only seven weeks away, many students’ joy is being mired by a minor hindrance with heavy ramifications, graduation applications.
“Grad checks,” as they’re known among students, are a mandatory application for all California State University students preparing to graduate.
“It’s a way to check that students are on track to graduate,” said CSUB Director of Admissions and Records Ben Perlado. “It’s how we’ve made sure that they’ve completed all their requirements.”
While this final checkpoint should be an easy step in the graduation process, some students are finding it to be a major source of stress.
“I actually finished in the spring of 2014,” said philosophy major Nick Nicita. “I took the CBEST instead of the GWAR and they didn’t see that, so my status read that my graduation was pending me taking the GWAR.”
Nicita, among other students have expressed contempt at the slow process and unclear deadline. Nicita knew he had to turn it in two quarters in advance, but missed the deadline by three days.
Because of this, Nicita has had to wait a year to get his diploma.
“When I turned mine in in October, I didn’t hear back until March,” Nicita said. “They should make the deadlines clearer. I missed the deadline by three days, and they didn’t recognize my CBEST and now I’ve had to wait a year for my degree on this stupid technicality.”
While some students wait to get over the repercussions of the system, others patiently hope they don’t suffer the same fate.
“I turned in my grad check within the deadline and for a long time I didn’t hear back,” said senior Geology major Allison Burich. “So I emailed my evaluator two months later and she said she’d just started the grad checks in December. I got mine back the first week of April.”
According to Perlado, the wait stems from the high volume of applicants.
“It’s important to turn in the application before the deadline,” he said. “It’s an overwhelming number of applications so it’s important to get yours done as soon as possible.”
“If they can’t get it before the last quarter, they need to either move up the deadline or hire more people,” Burich said.
The wait may be an annoyance to some students, but the price tag is universally abhorred.
“I don’t know why I’m paying extra for something I can check on myCSUB,” Burich said. “You can see that I’ve done all my requirements there.”
“The $55 is a simple processing fee,” Perlado said. “It pays for the amount of time and analysis that goes into the evaluation process. A part of it also goes toward ordering the diploma.”
Students also question why this sort of process cannot be done during quarterly advising. Burich said that students’ familiarity with their advisers and their specialty in major requirements would minimize the number of evaluations sent back with mistakes.
The application process, according to Perlado, runs parallel to the advising process. He said the students and advisers make the academic plan, while the evaluators are the final checkpoint on the road to graduation, making sure the proper requirements are fulfilled.