Most UMD students rebuild their academic history by hand: typing AP scores into a spreadsheet, guessing which transfer credits counted, and re-entering every Testudo course into a planner that starts blank. It takes an hour, you miss a gen-ed code, and your degree audit still does not match reality. Orbit skips that. Upload one unofficial transcript PDF from Testudo and Orbit parses your courses, grades, credits, and gen-ed tags, then feeds them into your degree audit and four-year plan automatically.
Why manual entry breaks down
AP, IB, and transfer credits rarely live in one place. By the time you are a sophomore, your real history spans three systems and two sticky notes. If your planner does not know what you already finished, it will suggest courses you took last year or flag prerequisites you already satisfied. One PDF import gives Orbit the same ground truth Testudo already has, without the retyping.
What Orbit pulls from your transcript
- Course codes, titles, grades, and credit hours for every UMD term
- Current enrollments and in-progress courses
- AP, IB, and transfer credit blocks with source labels
- Gen Ed category codes attached to each course
- Catalog enrichment so course names and credits match Orbit’s database
How to upload your transcript
- In Testudo, download your unofficial transcript as a PDF.
- Open Orbit and go to Credit Import, onboarding Step 1 (Import credits), or Settings → Prior credits.
- Upload the PDF and review the parsed course list before saving.
- Open your degree audit and four-year plan. Completed courses should already appear.
Profile autofill during onboarding
If you import during onboarding, Orbit can also prefill your profile: name, UID, class year, graduation year, college, and declared major or minors. That means less setup before your first schedule or plan suggestion. You can still edit anything before you finish onboarding.
Pro tip: re-upload after each semester
Grades post, you add a minor, or a transfer petition finally clears. Re-upload your latest unofficial transcript so Orbit stays aligned with Testudo. For step-by-step help inside the app, open Help Center → Getting started → Import credits.