The Mastery Transcript: Navigating the College Admissions Process in the Absence of Traditional Measures

Abstract

Mastery learning is a pedagogical approach that focuses on mastering content and competency based learning. The Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC) is a membership organization that developed a transcript platform to support schools when reporting mastery learning where traditional, grade point average (GPA)-based transcripts are not the best way to report student learning. MTC’s aim was to learn how to better support high school counselors at mastery learning schools that use the Mastery Transcript, a nontraditional transcript. Findings are focused on the differences between counselors at schools that send the Mastery Transcript for their students and those at traditional high schools and also on the perspectives of college admissions officers who receive Mastery Transcripts as part of admissions applications.