As enrollment headwinds intensify, universities are confronting a hard truth: their next class won’t be made up entirely of first-time freshmen. In fact, 74% of incoming students now arrive with some form of college credit, and many will decide not to apply if they can’t see how their credits will transfer up front.
Yet most institutions still treat transfer students like an afterthought, navigating broken workflows, siloed teams, and unclear policies that block action. DegreeSight aims to change that.
From Credit Evaluation to Enrollment Strategy
Founded by CEO David Cook, DegreeSight was born from personal experience: missed credits, bad advising, and near-catastrophic detours in the college journey. What started as a mission to increase credit transparency has evolved into a platform reshaping how colleges manage the entire transfer enrollment lifecycle, from inquiry to admission.
With the launch of DegreeSight 3.0, the company isn’t just improving how institutions evaluate transfer credits. It’s rearchitecting how schools respond to student demand for clarity, speed, and trust.
DegreeSight 3.0: From Point Tool to Connected Operating System
The new release introduces a fully redesigned administrative backend that allows enrollment teams, registrars, and faculty to work in unison, replacing spreadsheets, email chains, and bottlenecks with a coordinated system built for speed and accuracy.
Key features include:
- Assignments Engine – Route tasks to faculty, deans, or staff with built-in workflows.
- AI-Powered High School OCR – Instantly extract weighted GPAs and generate “likelihood to admit” decisions up to 90% faster.
- Custom Intake + Email Journeys – Engage students with tailored communication workflows.
- Transfer Groups – Easily manage statewide articulation agreements.
- CRM/SIS Integrations – Consolidated student profiles reduce manual effort by ~50% per applicant.
- Student-Sourced Syllabi – Let students upload syllabi directly for streamlined evaluation.
“We’re no longer just solving articulation,” says Cook. “We’re connecting the dots across inquiry, evaluation, and admissions, and letting institutions operate with clarity from day one.”
Why It Matters: Solving Higher Ed’s Hidden Bottleneck
Too often, institutions lose transfer students before a conversation even begins. Slow or vague answers to “Will my credits transfer?” can be the end of the line for a student who’s juggling cost, family, and career needs.
DegreeSight flips that script.
With automation and AI accelerating evaluations, students get faster, clearer answers. and enrollment staff gain time to focus on yield, not paperwork. Meanwhile, faculty can participate in the evaluation process without getting buried in disorganized emails.
Case studies show the results:
- Roosevelt University achieved 84.8% automation at launch and gained 32+ leads per week just from putting DegreeSight’s widget on their website.
- Other clients have reported 10–30% increases in transfer enrollment after implementing the system.
What It Means to Be “Transfer-Friendly” in 2026
“Transfer-friendly” is no longer about having a policy page or a PDF of articulation agreements. In 2026, it means having:
- An inbound funnel that captures intent directly from the website
- A real-time system that can review, route, and return decisions
- Cross-department alignment that enables rapid, accurate, student-centered action
DegreeSight 3.0 enables institutions to become truly transfer-centric, delivering ROI to both the institution and the student.
“Today, students expect personalized answers in minutes, not weeks. Being transfer-friendly isn’t a checkbox. It’s a competitive advantage,” says Drew Melendres, DegreeSight co-founder.
The Flywheel in Motion
With AI capabilities accelerating credit evaluations and human-in-the-loop workflows maintaining institutional integrity, DegreeSight helps schools build what Cook calls a “transfer flywheel”, a compounding system where:
- Transparency generates more leads
- Speed improves conversion
- Collaboration reduces friction
- Outcomes prove value
It’s not just about processing credit faster, it’s about earning student trust sooner, keeping teams aligned, and turning transfer strategy into an enrollment engine.
And with new capabilities for high school transcript automation, DegreeSight is already taking steps to bridge the gap between transfer, first-year, and returning adult learners, meeting students where they are, and helping institutions adapt to where higher ed is going.
Institutions that are winning in this environment have begun to treat transfer evaluation as a front-end enrollment strategy rather than a back-end compliance task, investing in a modern transfer enrollment platform that aligns admissions, faculty, and registrar teams.