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Frequently asked questions about TransferPro™ Windows-based transfer evaluation
software by IronSoft
What is Transfer Pro?
TransferPro™ is a system that automatically equates credits
taken at other schools with courses offered at your school. Complex transfer
rules, credit limits, and special rules by department are no match for
TransferPro’s algorithms. Best of all, TransferPro™ integrates automatically
with IronSoft’s Academic Audit for Windows, the most powerful degree
audit program around.
Why should our school use TransferPro?
Not only will TransferPro™ save you time and effort, it will
act as a powerful sales tool to help keep enrollment figures rising. It
provides instant answers to the questions a student asks when selecting
which school to transfer to, and provides him with a printed report. It
creates an electronic database of transfer applicants’ demographic information
and course history which can be used for tracking purposes. It’s portable—it
can be easily used on a laptop computer at a transfer fair.
Or, if your school has a high number of outgoing transfer students (a
community college, for instance,) TransferPro can tell them how their courses
will transfer to other schools, without the tedious clerical work normally
associated with this task.
How does it work?
In order to do its job, TransferPro™ needs information from
two sources: the transferring student’s transcript and the transfer rules
from your school. TransferPro looks at the courses on the transcript, and
using your school’s transfer rules, determines which of your school’s courses
they are equivalent to. It can also print a report which shows how each
course has been used.
How does TransferPro know what our school’s transfer rules are?
Most schools have formal “articulation agreements” with schools from
which they receive a high proportion of their incoming transfer students
(commonly referred to as “feeder” schools.) These agreements determine
which of your school’s courses a transfer applicant will be given credit
for. They must be translated into “articulation files” which TransferPro™
can read and understand. This is done with any text editing or word processing
program, or with TransferPro’s built-in editor.
An articulation file is created with a simple, intuitive coding language
built into TransferPro.™ One need not be a computer programmer to
write articulation files, but a familiarity with your school’s articulation
agreements will make the job much easier. An articulation file generally
consists of statements like the following:
The above statement would tell TransferPro that if a student has taken
ENGL-80 at the feeder school for which that statement was made, he will
be given credit for ENGL-101 at your school.
How does TransferPro read the courses from the student’s transcript?
There are three basic ways for a student’s data to be entered into
TransferPro™ :
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Manual Entry: TransferPro™ has a simple spreadsheet-like template
which makes entering the student’s course history quick and easy.
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Importing SPEEDE/ExPRESS: Future versions of TransferPro™ will read
student transcripts provided in this standard electronic format.
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Importing from “IronSoft” format: If you are using TransferPro™
to advise outgoing transfer students who are already in your student database,
IronSoft provides a simple ASCII-text file format into which your data
center can export student information. TransferPro can then read this information
into it’s student database.
What kind of computer do I need to run TransferPro?
TransferPro™ requires at least a 486 PC, running Windows 3.1
or Windows 95, with 4Mb RAM and 10Mb free hard disk space (more may be
required, depending on the size of the student database.)
Will TransferPro run on our network?
Yes, TransferPro™ is a fully-networkable product.
How can we tell if TransferPro is suitable for our school?
Call IronSoft to find out about our no-risk
evaluation program, which lets you use the full-working verion of the software,
with full telephone technical support and documentation, for 30 days at
no charge.
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