Normally, once a student has voluntarily submitted a transcript to your school,  you should be able to view it as long as you don't make it public.  That should not be limited by FERPA.  You might want to see if your state or school has additional restrictions.  I have found that our Admissions office will often request that we look over an applicant's transcript if they are considering a music major.  I don't know why it would be different for othe applicants.  You could ask someone in Admissions to do that for you.

 

Larry Smith

Missouri Baptist University

St Louis MO

smithl(a)mobap.edu

Russell:  It MAY be true, but I would suggest checking with your school's attorney.  Registrars (and other administrators) can sometimes go off the deep end with their own interpretations.  But FERPA DOES do some weird and illogical things.

 

This school apparently asks applying students about their interest in various things, including music ensembles, and the Admissions Office provides us with the names and contact information for those who indicated an interest in music.  If your Admissions Office doesn't do the same thing, they should!  So ask.  And as a matter of fact your Admissions people might well be more cooperative than your Registrar.

 

We then send out our own questionaires, audition date information, and stuff like that.  And ask our individual faculty members to follow up with prospective students in their own areas.  I know for a fact that we got a list of those interested in choir, because I was sent a copy!

 

But if you run into a brick wall on this, you should by all means use all the usual tricks of the trade to recruit prosepctive students, including contacting high school choral directors and maybe even visiting their schools and their choirs.  Personal contact can be VERY motivating, compared with impersonal form letters or emails.  In fact my high school barbershop/entertainment quartet was given a full-ride scholarship to represent my undergrad school, which was like yours a small, liberal arts college that was nominally but very loosely church-affiliated, and in return we went out one day a week and put on assemblies at high schools, accompanied by a former student body president who could answer questions.  So talk to the people at your school who ARE concerned with recruitment in general, because anything you can do to help them with THEIR job will surely be appreciated.  A small school NEEDS that kind of hands-on recruitment.

All the best,

John

Russell,

 

I work as an admissions director, and can confirm that asking to review the transcripts of every student at the school would not be FERPA-compliant.  It would be different if your situation were like Larry Smith's, where the Admissions office is attempting to determine a student's suitability for their desired major, but the review of transcripts for the purposes of recruiting to a program does not fall within FERPA guidelines.  As John Howell suggests, you might at least be able to get a list of students who have indicated an interest in music on their application, but access to their transcripts is protected.  I agree with John that personal contact is a very strong factor - not only your interaction with high school directors and your college's recruitment office, but also through the interactions your singers have with other students on campus; having attended a small liberal arts school, I remember that students very quickly learn nearly everything about everyone else - so your singers will know in no time which of their friends sang in high school, and may be a helpful force in bringing those students to your choir.

 

Best of luck in your recruiting!

 

Phillip Klepacki

University of Florida

Double-check your school's FERPA statement.  There is probably some verbiage in there that says this information can be released to those with a "legitimate educational interest".  This might give you some traction if the registrar is balking at your request.  the FERPA statement should be online.  Just search for "YOUR SCHOOL NAME" and "FERPA" together and it should come up.