By Michelle Hu
<[email protected]>

While the rest of her classmates are fretting over upcoming college application deadlines, senior Elizabeth Frederick has time to relax. She sent in all of her applications at the beginning of the school year and is now waiting for a response from the three schools she hopes to attend.

One aspect of her experience is significantly different from students’ of previous years: Docufide, an online service, made sending in her transcripts more efficient and much simpler.

This year, Docufide expanded to all postsecondary schools in the United States, so students now have the ability to send in their transcripts electronically to any college in the nation.

Since students now send about 60 percent of applications electronically, according to the National Association for College Counseling, Docufide allows students to move into the technological future.

Maria Pacalo, registrar at this school who takes care of students’ transcripts, said that the process has notably simplified her daily tasks. In the past, what used to take her two hours now only consumes 15 minutes of her day. “It saves a boatload of time,” Pacalo said.

Docufide is mainly a storage and mailing system that is free for all users. Counselors or school administrators log into Docufide, upload transcripts onto the site and Docufide will then email those transcripts to the students’ colleges of choice.

However, counselor Rich Allen said that the only downside to Docufide is that some colleges do not request a counselor portion on electronic transcripts. This means that, if a student has a decrease in GPA, the counselor has no chance to give an explanation.

Still, Frederick said that the service made her life more simple, though she only used it for in-state schools. She said that her applications took a total of couple of hours to complete. “You didn’t have to go to the counseling office or anything like that,” she said. “All you had to do was just register online and send it out.”

Docufide also saves the counseling center the hassle of printing out and authenticating the documents. “When I mail a transcript by paper, I have to stamp and seal it, so they’re confirming that it’s a certified transcript through Docufide,” Pacalo said.

Docufide is a national, privately-owned company located in Los Angeles but offers services pro bono to all secondary schools in the nation.

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BEFORE:

• Students fill out paper applications
• Visit counseling center
• Request transcript
• Counselors print transcripts, certify authenticity
• Stamp and mail to college

AFTER:

• Students fill out online applications
• Log into Docufide
• Request transcripts
• Counselors upload transcripts, approve student requests

MARIA PACALO / SOURCE