When will the Dean’s List/President’s List be posted?

Dean’s List and President’s List Merit achievements are distributed following the end of the each semester. Please allow for a few weeks following the posting of final grades and grade verification/grade appeals.

In general, the lists will be posted in the following schedule, subject to information availability from the Registrar’s Office:

• Fall Semester: by the end of the following January
• Spring Semester: by mid-June following the end of the Spring Semester, if not earlier
• Summer Semester: by the end of the following September, if not earlier

Fall and Spring Eligibility

Dean’s List
To be eligible for the Dean’s List, degree-seeking students must have earned a GPA of at least 3.5 for a minimum of nine semester hours of academic credit taken at Georgia State during the fall or spring term with no incompletes for the semester. Eligible students must have a minimum GPA of 2.0 for all classes taken at Georgia State.

President’s List
To be eligible for the President’s List, degree-seeking students must have earned a GPA of at least 4.0 for a minimum of nine semester hours of academic credit taken at Georgia State during the fall or spring term with no incompletes for the semester. Eligible students must have a minimum GPA of 2.0 for all classes taken at Georgia State.

Summer Eligibility

Dean’s List
To be eligible for the Dean’s List during the summer semester, degree-seeking students with a minimum Georgia State cumulative GPA of 2.00 must earn a 3.50 GPA for the semester and complete at least 6 semester hours of academic credit with no incompletes.

President’s List
To be eligible for the President’s List during the summer semester, degree-seeking students with a minimum Georgia State University cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 2.00 must earn a 4.0 GPA for the semester and complete at least 6 semester hours of academic credit with no incompletes.

No, only undergraduate students are eligible for the Dean’s List and President’s List.

Announcement Distribution

Georgia State University uses Merit to share Dean’s List and President’s List announcements. Merit allows the university to share your achievements through the web and social media – and allows you to quickly share your achievement on your own social media accounts.

Additionally, the university uses Merit to distribute announcements about Dean’s List and President’s List to hometown media outlets for community news sections.

Notifications about Merit achievements, including Dean’s List and President’s List, are sent to students‘ @student.gsu.edu email addresses.

If you are not familiar with Merit, learn more by clicking the button below!

Will I get a certificate or other recognition from Georgia State?

In addition to recognition on the website of your college or school, we are excited to announce the addition of printable certificates for Dean’s List and President’s List, starting in May 2021.

Notifications sent to students at their student.gsu.edu email addresses will include a button to take them to their certificates. These certificates are also available to students in their Merit accounts under account settings in the “Certificates” tab. Click here to see a demonstration image (PNG format) in a new window/new browser tab.

The certificates have been issued retroactively to the fall of 2014 for students enrolled at Georgia State’s Atlanta campus prior to its consolidation with Georgia Perimeter College, and retroactively to all post-consolidation Atlanta and Perimeter College campus students from fall 2016 to present. They are available under the “Certificates” tab.

Where can I find certificates for previous semesters?

Students who were named to the Dean’s List or President’s List can download certificates retroactively.

If you go to your account settings in Merit, click the “Certificates” tab on the settings screen. You will see all certificates you can download from previous semesters.

Click here to see a demonstration image (PNG format) in a new window/new browser tab.

Certificates are available retroactively as follows:

• Students who were first named to the Dean’s List or President’s List at the downtown Atlanta campus starting in Fall 2014 (prior to the Georgia Perimeter/Georgia State consolidation).
• All students on all campuses starting in Fall 2016 (the first semester after Georgia Perimeter College consolidated with Georgia State University).

I should be on the Dean’s List, but my name isn’t here. Who do I contact to fix this?

This information is provided by the Office of the Registrar following grade verification. There could be multiple reasons why your name is not listed:

• You may not have enough institutional hours at GSU (classes taken at GSU) to be eligible.
• Your GPA for classes taken at GSU (not including any course credit that transferred) may not meet the minimum requirements.
• You may have an incomplete on your record.
• The final grade you officially received in PAWS may have differed from what you expected.
• You may have had a grade appeal/change that had not yet been processed at the time the Dean’s List data was provided to the Merit pages administrator.

If you believe your records to be in error, please contact the Registrar’s Office at [email protected]. If there are changes, the Registrar’s Office will verify and will contact the administrator of this page.

Only undergraduate students are eligible for the Dean’s List and the President’s List.

Merit says I’m on the Dean’s List when I should be on the President’s List. Can you fix this?

As mentioned in the section above, this information is provided by the Office of the Registrar following grade verification. There could be multiple reasons why your name is on the Dean’s List and not the President’s List:

• You may not have enough institutional hours at GSU (classes taken at GSU) to be eligible.
• Your GPA for classes taken at GSU (not including any course credit that transferred) may not meet the minimum requirements.
• You may have an incomplete on your record.
• The final grade you officially received in PAWS may have differed from what you expected.
• You may have had a grade appeal/change that had not yet been processed at the time the Dean’s List data was provided to the Merit pages administrator.

If you believe your records to be in error, please contact the Registrar’s Office at [email protected]. If there are changes, the Registrar’s Office will verify and will contact the administrator of this page.

I don’t want my name to appear in public, or I want to make some information on my Merit page private but allow my name to still appear on these lists in Merit. How do I opt out? Can I change privacy settings?

To learn how to opt out of Merit or how to maintain your Merit page but change your privacy settings, please select the link below. A new browser tab or browser window will open and take you to instructions through Merit’s help/knowledge base system.

I’m a parent. Can you send me a certificate for my student?

These certificates are available only to students through their Merit accounts; neither the Registrar’s Office nor the Provost’s Office issues the certificates through a separate system. Please ask your student to check their Merit accounts; if they have trouble, please ask them to email [email protected] for further assistance.

I’m a parent. Why hasn’t my child’s name appeared in my hometown media outlet?

For locations in the United States, including the 50 states and U.S. territories (Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands), Georgia State uses Merit to send press releases about Dean’s List and President’s List, automatically sending the releases to media outlets in areas which provide news coverage for your student’s ZIP code.

News outlets, including newspapers, typically publish the lists in their community news or lifestyle sections.

After they receive the press release, it is up to each media outlet to determine when to publish student achievements. This may vary on editorial decisions depending on the size of the media outlet, their geographic coverage area, or other factors beyond the university’s control.

After Georgia State sends out the Dean’s List and President’s List through Merit, if you don’t see the news in your local news outlet (hometown newspaper, hometown news website, etc.) within two weeks, we suggest you contact the news outlet directly.

If they say that they haven’t received the press release, let us know at [email protected] and we can send the news release to them again. It may also be a case where the ZIP code on file with Merit for your student does not match their current ZIP code; we can correct this discrepancy when notified.

What about internationally?

International students will still receive the same digital “badge” that U.S. students do for their personal Merit pages, so that they can share the announcement on their social media accounts, including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Merit cannot distribute press releases to locations outside of the 50 U.S. states and its territories. Students and parents can contact [email protected] for further assistance in informing the hometown media outlet.

Who else does Georgia State inform about Dean’s List and President’s List?

High Schools: Georgia State also uses Merit to share these achievements with the student’s high school of record. This is the U.S. high school that the student entered on their application to Georgia State, if available. Guidance counselors and others at these high schools typically receive this information. If the high school itself uses Merit for recognizing their students, the high school may also share their alumni’s Dean’s List/President’s List achievement.

Local Officials: Additionally, for U.S. students, state/territorial-level representatives and senators are notified. As a constituent service, your local legislator may send a message of congratulations through Merit in lieu of a formal letter. This is a typical service that many local legislators have done over many decades as a matter of practice and recognition for their local constituents. Merit allows them to continue this tradition digitally.

What are Georgia State’s student records policies? Where can I learn more?

The Office of the Registrar’s website has a helpful Records Access information page that explains student records rules, regulations, policies and procedures. This includes laws such as the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974. To access the Records Access information page, select the link below.

Does Georgia State also issue similar announcements for graduation?

Yes. Note that the Merit graduation announcements are not the same as your actual diploma. Merit announcements go on your Merit page for sharing on social media and, if you are from the U.S., they go out as press releases to media outlets in your hometown.

The announcements are issued separately a few weeks following the official conferral of degrees by the Registrar’s Office.

Official conferral means that the Registrar’s Office has certified that the student has completed all of the necessary coursework and other requirements, with no incomplete grades (grades of “I”).

Official conferral dates are available at the Registrar’s Office website, https://registrar.gsu.edu.

If you are trying to locate where your diploma is in the mail, please use the Registrar’s Office link above to contact that office.

I just graduated and haven’t received my diploma yet. When will I get it?

This is a question for the Office of Graduation Review and Diploma Services in the Registrar’s Office. Please select the link below for more information about

1. When degrees are officially conferred by the university
2. How diplomas are sent to graduates
3. Where diplomas are sent
4. When you will receive your diploma
5. What to do if you do not receive your diploma

and more.

GSU’s Merit pages and accounts are administered by Jeremy Craig, Communications Manager for the Office of the Provost and personnel of the central Department of Public Relations and Marketing Communications, in partnership with the Office of the Registrar and the communications offices of the colleges and schools of Georgia State University.

If you have questions, so that other individuals can assist if Mr. Craig is not available, please email [email protected].