Degree Works is the degree audit most US colleges hand you: what you've completed, what's in progress, and what's still needed to graduate. It's accurate and hard to read. This page explains every block, the questions students ask most, and what to do with it next; then links to the guide for your own school.
| Degree block | The top summary: your program, catalog year, overall GPA, total credits applied, and the percentage bar. Each line below it points at one of the blocks that follow. |
| General education / Core | The school-wide requirements every degree shares (writing, math, sciences, humanities). Lines read "1 Class in" or "3 Credits in" with the courses or areas that satisfy them. |
| Major block | Your major's own requirements: required courses, choose-from groups, concentration tracks, and rules such as "at least 12 upper-division hours in residence". |
| Minor / Concentration | Same structure as the major block, one per declared minor or track. |
| Fallthrough | Classes that count toward total hours but no specific requirement: electives, unmapped transfer credit, extra classes. Not an error. |
| Insufficient | Classes with a grade too low to count (often below C in the major), withdrawals, and repeats that were replaced. |
| In-progress | This term's classes, counted as if you'll pass. They move into their blocks when grades post. |
| Exceptions | Substitutions and waivers an advisor applied. If one is missing, this is where to look before asking. |
Degree Works is a degree audit: a report from your school's student system that compares the classes you've taken (and are taking) against the requirements of your degree, and lists what's still needed. It's made by Ellucian and used by several hundred US colleges. Other schools run a similar audit under another name: uAchieve or DARS, Stellic, Degree Navigator, u.achieve, or a "program evaluation" in Colleague Self-Service.
Sign in to your school's student portal and look for Degree Works, Degree Audit, or Degree Evaluation, usually under Student, Advising or Records. The default view, the Worksheet, is the audit. Most schools let you save it as a PDF from the print or save icon at the top.
Each Still needed line is a requirement you haven't satisfied, with the classes that would satisfy it. "1 Class in MATH 3260 or STAT 3010" means take one of them; "3 Classes in PSYC 3@" means three psychology classes at the 3000 level (the @ is a wildcard); "Choose from" lists are options, not all required.
Fallthrough holds classes that count toward your total credit hours but don't fit any specific requirement: electives, transfer credit the audit couldn't map, or a class that would fit but the audit used something else there. It isn't an error, but if a class should be filling a requirement, your advisor can apply an exception.
Transfer credit appears only after the registrar posts it, which can take weeks after your transcript arrives. Once posted, it lands either in a requirement block (if it was evaluated as an equivalent course) or in Fallthrough (if it came in as elective credit). AP and IB credit work the same way.
What-If lets you run the audit against a different major, minor, concentration or catalog year without changing anything on your record. It's the fastest way to see how a change of major would land. Look Ahead does the same for classes you're thinking of taking next term.
Your catalog year is the version of the degree requirements that applies to you, usually the year you started the program. Requirements in the website catalog may be newer than yours; the audit uses your year. Changing majors can move you to the current catalog year.
The percentage counts credit hours, not requirements. You can be over the hour total and still have an unmet requirement (a specific class, a residency rule, a minimum GPA, or an upper-division hour count). The Still needed lines are what matter.
The audit tells you what's left. It doesn't say which of those classes to take next semester, which sections have seats, or which instructor grades easiest. ClassMaxx reads the audit (upload the PDF; it's never stored) and does that part: a checklist, four ready schedules from this term's open sections, and a free email the moment a full class opens.
ClassMaxx is not affiliated with your school. We never ask for a school password.
786 colleges, each with where to find the audit, what its blocks mean there, and the programs ClassMaxx already knows.
Degree Works is a product of Ellucian. ClassMaxx is not affiliated with Ellucian or with any college. Other audit systems (uAchieve/DARS, Stellic, Colleague program evaluations) are read the same way.
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