It’s that time of year again where students can petition for certificates and AA/AS Degrees. The deadline to do so is this Friday, March 30th.

Rob Peters is among one of the many counselors that help students navigate the bureaucracy and fill out the forms with correct information.

“To get a certificate or degree, all required classes must be completed or in progress of completion this semester,” said Peters.

Peters also explained the difference between a certificate and a degree. “A certificate is not a college degree. There are certificates of accomplishment and certificates of achievement,” he explains. A certificate of achievement is for specialized courses related to specific occupational skills. Peter continues, “this is for an entry level job, it got it’s limits, not much upward mobility.” The number of units required for this varies according to what profession the student is interested in pursuing. A certificate of accomplishment on the other hand is for students who completed their General Education (GE) requirements and wish to transfer.

An AA/AS degree has additional requirements beyond completing GE that depend on the major a student is specializing in.

 The substitution of graduation requirement in the petition is for students who completed a requirement elsewhere to tell the administration that the requirement has been filled at another institution or another manner.

The “catalog year” in the petition is where the student lists the year he/she started going back to DVC. On the other hand, the line below it about the first semester of attendance is where the student discloses when he/she initially started at DVC.

In the past, the school used to provide hard copies of a “student planning guide” that helped explain how to properly plan a student’s educational goals but due to budget cuts, this guide is no longer accessible to students.

“Student services has been hurt pretty bad, we are the link to students to get this information and help make sense out of it,” Peter said when explaining how it’s been harder for him to do his job due to the politics in Sacramento.

Peter and the admissions office staff advised students to not use any other color than black or blue ink when filling out the forms or else they can’t be scanned into a computer.

He also advised students to no lie on their petition about other colleges they attended or they will be rejected.

Students must currently have a 2.0 to apply and the graduation ceremony is on May 25th.