Graduate Student Tracking System
Track the academic requirements needed to earn your degree with an Advisement Report in the Graduate Student Tracking System (GSTS). GSTS is not an auditing or degree-clearing system and is not intended to replace the role of advisors and graduate program coordinators/managers.
Advisement Reports include:
- curricular requirements on a program’s Guide page
- prior coursework used for transfer credit, after it is manually entered
- individual exceptions to denote deviations from standard curriculum, after they are manually entered
Reports are not available for the following credentials:
- double majors, dual degrees, or joint degrees
- doctoral minors
- graduate/professional certificates
Advisement Reports follow the degree requirements listed on a program’s Guide page. The information in Guide is current for the academic year. Your Advisement Report may not match the Guide page if the program has made curricular changes since you have entered the program. Students are responsible for meeting the academic requirements that were in effect at the time they matriculated or entered the program. Archived versions of Guide are available to view previous years’ requirements.
Due to significant changes in policy for graduate degree requirements in Fall 2014, students who began their program prior to that time will not have a report.
How to Access your Advisement Report
- Log in to MyUW.
- Select Launch Full App on the Student Center tile.
- Select the Graduate Academic Progress tile.
- Select the Academic Progress tab on the left-hand side of the screen to generate your academic advisement report. The report may take a minute or two to load.
- Select specific report sections to view detailed information about academic requirements and your progress toward completion.
- To navigate back to the full Advisement Report after opening a specific requirement section, select the Academic Progress back arrow or Academic Progress tab in the upper left corner of the page.
Understanding your Advisement Report
Structure of the GSTS Advisement Report
1. GSTS Report Information (Read Me)
The top of each report provides background information about what the report shows, where the requirements in the report come from, and some of the restrictions.
2. Program Coursework Requirements
Your program coursework requirements come from the Required Courses section of the Requirements tab on a program’s Guide page. This section may be titled “Program Coursework Requirements” or “Program Requirements”, but the content is the same.
3. Program Minimum Requirements
Information on your program’s minimum requirements is pulled from the Curricular Requirements section of the Requirements tab on a program’s Guide page.
4. Reference Section/Additional Courses taken as a Graduate Student
This section displays additional courses taken in the Graduate Career. These courses may or may not have been used to fulfill other program requirements or requirements for a doctoral minor or graduate/professional certificate. If there is a course listed here that you believe should satisfy program-specific requirements, contact your graduate program coordinator/manager.
For a complete record of all courses taken at UW–Madison, see the Course History section.
5. Course History
This section displays all of the courses you have taken at UW–Madison. This includes courses taken as an undergraduate, graduate, or special student.
Requirements show up as either Satisfied (green check mark indicator) or Not Satisfied (yellow diamond indicator). The progress bars next to requirements can be helpful at a glance, but it is important to know that the percentage is rounded up and should only be taken as an approximation.
Two different types of courses will show up in your Advisement Report:
- Taken: You have already completed and received a final grade for this course.
- In Progress: Courses you are currently enrolled in that have yet to be completed. The report assumes you will successfully complete any courses that are In Progress.
Planned courses will not show up in your report.
Graduate programs may transfer credits for prior coursework to satisfy degree requirements. Each program has its own transfer credit review process. Contact your program with questions.
The Advisement Report will not map transfer courses to an equivalent course at UW–Madison. Transfer credit appears as a general graduate transfer course so programs can track the number of graduate transfer credits.
Finding Transfer Credit on an Advisement Report
To find transfer credit in your report, click and expand the Minimum Graduate Credit Requirement section. The course appears in the report with the generic description, “Graduate Transfer Course” and course number with a generic prefix like “GEN ELCT X01”. The prefix varies based on the type of transfer course entered.
Exceptions and Transfer Credit
An exception is the term that refers to a deviation from the pre-programed curriculum in your Advisement Report. For a transfer course to satisfy a requirement, your graduate program must manually add an exception. Only then will the transfer course appear in a specific section of the report. Direct questions about how to apply transfer credits to requirements to your graduate program.
Below you can see how a transfer course looks like when an exception is made to a requirement.
To view notes attached to an exception, click view requirement course notes (the blue circle) in the notes column.
Frequently Asked Questions
The system had trouble processing your request or loading a section of your report. Try refreshing your Advisement Report in one of these ways:
- Click the OK button, then on the “Academic Progress Summary” tab and come back to the “Academic Progress” tab to try that section of the report again.
- Click the OK button, exit out of the Graduate Academic Progress tile altogether, and try coming back into the tile and the “Academic Progress” tab.
- Click the OK button, then try clicking back into the section again. This may take several times.
- If you ever get kicked back to the “Academic Progress Summary” tab you should be able to go back to the “Academic Progress” tab and view the section where you previously got the error message.
If none of these options work, contact your graduate program coordinator/manager. They can send you a PDF copy of your report or help you reach out to the GSTS manager for more assistance.
If you get any error messages other than a “Data Integrity Error” or you are unable to access your Advisement Report, please reach out to your graduate program coordinator/manager to let them know and have them contact the GSTS manager.
Contact your graduate program for questions about adding graduate transfer credit for prior coursework. You will need to work with your graduate program(s) to verify appropriate prior coursework policies and procedures.
The course number attached to transfer courses is generated based on the type of course used for transfer credit and which minimum degree requirements it fulfills.
Breadth is a required component of doctoral training at UW–Madison as detailed in the Breadth Requirement in Doctoral Training policy. Each program has specific guidance on how to satisfy the breadth requirement. In programs where a Doctoral Minor or Graduate/Professional Certificate is used, the Advisement Report will only display the name of that credential. However, reports do not display the specific curricular requirements for these awards.
As you work toward completing your Doctoral Minor or Graduate/Professional Certificate, that coursework may fall into the “Reference Section/Additional Courses taken as a Graduate Student” or show up as an elective of some kind. You should work with your advisor and doctoral program to ensure these courses will count toward the Doctoral Minor or Graduate/Professional Certificate and that you are meeting the breadth requirement.
Informal pathways represent different curricular pathways students can take within a major and are managed by individual programs. Because of this, the default of the Advisement Reports is to show all possible pathways and allow graduate programs to “waive” the pathways that are not relevant to the student. This process requires a manual effort by the graduate program coordinator/manager.
Check with your advisor or program coordinator to make sure you are on the same page about which pathway you are working toward and ignore the requirements for the other pathways displayed in the report.
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