Questions, answered plainly.
If yours isn’t here, send it over — the answer usually ends up on this page.
Is it free?
Yes. Free for students, no paid tier, no ads, no credit card. It is a student project, not a startup with a pricing page.
Is this official? Does Penn State endorse it?
No. GradGPS is an independent student project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by The Pennsylvania State University. Course and program information comes from publicly published university sources.
Does this replace my adviser?
No, and it shouldn’t. Departments grant exceptions, substitutions, and one-off approvals that no catalog anywhere records. GradGPS is good at the part that is written down — the requirements, the sequencing, the credit math — and it is the fastest way to walk into an advising appointment already knowing what to ask about.
Which majors work?
Any Penn State major can be audited against the catalog. About 180 University Park majors additionally have their official Suggested Academic Plan modelled — that’s what puts your remaining semesters in a prerequisite-correct, credit-balanced order.
If your major doesn’t have a plan yet, you still get the full audit; the timeline just packs your remaining requirements by credit load instead of following a published sequence.
What happens to my transcript?
It’s stored encrypted, used only to build your audit and plan, and never sold or shared for advertising. It is not sent to any third-party AI service and is never used to train models. You can delete your transcript, or your entire account and everything attached to it, from the Account screen in the app.
The full detail is in the privacy policy.
Official or unofficial transcript?
Unofficial — the one in LionPATH under Academic Records → Unofficial Transcript. It’s free, instant, and the layout GradGPS reads most reliably. Official transcripts are a different, two-column signed layout; GradGPS detects them and will warn you rather than quietly storing a garbled parse.
The audit got something wrong. Now what?
Tell us, and include your major — that’s the first thing we check. Most of the catalog bugs fixed so far came from a student noticing a course on their timeline that had no business being there.
If your department approved a course in place of a requirement, you can also declare that substitution yourself in the app, and the whole plan reflows around it.
Why iPhone only?
Because one person is building it. Android is on the roadmap; it isn’t in the beta. There is no web version yet either.
I’m not at Penn State. Can I use it?
Not yet. Every requirement, gen-ed rule, and academic plan in GradGPS is Penn State’s, so another school needs its own catalog modelled from scratch.
Tell us which school you’re at — put the school name in the subject line. Demand is genuinely how the next one gets picked.
Who is behind this?
One Penn State student. More about that here.