Harvard Explained: How Not to Graduate

Remember that 25-page paper you wrote for your seminar last year? See all of those notebooks neatly lined up on your shelf, overflowing with equations and philosophical principles? Well, hate to break it to you, but all of those expos papers you passed in at 4:59 P.M. aren’t going to help you graduate. You forgot to write the most important paper of all: your diploma slip.

Could this, every senior’s worst nightmare, even be possibe? Once we dreamt up this horrifying scenario, we knew we had to find out if we were just being paranoid.

Lucky for all of you forgetful seniors, the Registrar’s office promises that a missing signature or two won’t undo four years’ worth of hard work.

“There is very little that a graduating student could do to truly jeopardize his or her graduation status,” FAS Registrar Barry S. Kane writes in an email. “The only real paperwork that is required is the graduation application, and even here we will show flexibility if we need to do that.”

As long as seniors meet minimum academic requirements, they should not be worried that they will not join their friends at Commencement in June. “The good work of our Senior Tutors and other academic advisers serve students well in making sure that they are meeting their particular requirements for graduation,” says Kane. So, seniors, you can relax. Those mad dashes to the Expos Office were worth it after all.