Parchment and Official Documents FAQs for Final Year Students

You will only get your degree certificate (also often called your parchment or diploma) at or after your conferring ceremony date. UCD holds three batches of conferring ceremonies each year. Degree parchments are not issued prior to the ceremony. 

In the meantime, a number of Official UCD Documents are available, including your Academic Transcript and Diploma Supplement.

The general rule is undergraduate students who complete their degree requirements in June will be invited to a September conferring ceremony.

You can view the conferring schedule online to see what date your conferring ceremony is likely to be. 

If you have questions around when you are going to graduate, you can contact the Conferring team. 

No, it is not usually possible to get your parchment before your conferring ceremony.

You have proof of completion of your degree, which is documented on your Academic Transcripts and other Official UCD Documents.

Your academic transcripts confirm your Award date which is the date you have successfully completed all course requirements - which means you have been awarded your degree.
Students only have academic transcripts after they successfully complete all course requirements.
Your official UCD documents are what you have to provide as proof of having successfully completed your degree until you get your parchment.

More information about your UCD Official Documents is available online. 

You do not have access to your degree certificate until you have attended your conferring ceremony. Until then, your academic transcript is what you have to provide if you successfully completed all course requirements. You also have access to a Diploma Supplement through SISWeb. 

It is not possible to obtain this degree certificate/diploma/parchment earlier.

• The Award Date, as shown on your transcript, is the official confirmation of your degree completion.
• The Conferral Date is ceremonial and takes place after the Award Date. That day you will receive your degree certificate, it is not possible to receive this earlier than your designated conferral ceremony.

You can download your academic transcripts from SISWeb, and email them yourself. Online documents are secure and verifiable. 

If the third party want hard copies posted directly from UCD instead, you can order & pay for hard copies and we can post them out to their delivery address.

UCD has its own verification system set up, so third parties can check the documents they are provided by students.

Instructions for you: you "enable" your documents for third party verification by clicking the "click to enable access" button to the right of the document on SISWeb (SISWeb > Registration, Fees & Assessments > My Official Documents > Electronic Documents). Students can enable/disable verification of their documents through their SISWeb account by clicking the "enable access" button beside the relevant document.

Instructions for the third party you send these to: If the student has enabled verification, the recipient will be able to verify the authenticity of the document at www.ucd.ie/verify. Enter the Student's ID Number & the document-specific, 16-digit alphanumeric ID code listed on the bottom of the document. If the student has not enabled verification, the third party will receive a message denying them access to verify the document.

No, UCD cannot email official documents. This would undermine our document verification system. If you have enabled third party verification as outlined above, and provided your online documents to their team, and these have been rejected, we can email their team with you cc'd to explain how they can verify your online documents at www.ucd.ie/verify and to ask if they accept your online documents.

Please only request this if you have already supplied your online documents to their team and they have been rejected.

If they do not accept our clarification email, you may need to order hard copies of your transcripts to be posted to their team (but you should check this with the third party directly, as we cannot advise what other institutions are able to accept).