Creating a spreadsheet to bulk add or update students

Modified on Thu, 2 Jul at 10:38 AM

Overview

This guide is for school administrators and counselors who need to create or update multiple student accounts at once in Overgrad. It covers how to export data from your Student Information System (SIS), how to prepare a CSV manually using a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, and the required and optional fields for each student record.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Overview
Preparing the spreadsheet
- Generating a file from your Student Information System
- Manually preparing the spreadsheet
Required Fields
Optional Fields

Preparing the spreadsheet

In order to create student accounts in bulk, you will first need to prepare a CSV file with their basic info and upload that CSV into Overgrad. There are a few different ways you can create the CSV:

Generating a file from your Student Information System

If you are generating a CSV text file by exporting data from your school or district’s Student Information System (PowerSchool, Tyler SIS, Skyward, Infinite Campus, etc.), follow these steps:

Select the records you would like to export (i.e. all current students, 10th graders, etc.).
Select the fields to include in your export file.
Save the file to your hard drive in a comma-separated value (CSV) text format.

The required and optional fields are listed at the bottom of this article. If the CSV you have downloaded from your SIS is missing any of the required fields, you will need to add these columns manually.

Manually preparing the spreadsheet

If you are preparing your text file manually using a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or Google Docs, follow these steps:

Create a new spreadsheet. We recommend that you download a template CSV, but you can also create the file on your own. If you are starting with a blank document, place each field in a separate column. For example: one column for the student’s last name, another for the student’s first name, and another for the student’s graduation year.
Place each student in their own row, and ensure that each required field is filled out for each student.
'Save as' the file to your hard drive in a comma-separated value (CSV) text format.

Below is an example CSV that shows how the first row contains the headers and each additional row contains the data each student.

Student ID	Email	Last Name	First Name	High School	Graduation Year
12345678	ckent@example.com	Kent	Clark	PHS	2027
23456789	llane@example.com	Lane	Lois	PHS	2027

Required Fields

Below are the required fields that you must have for each student in your spreadsheet. If you are exporting from your SIS, these are the fields you should select for each student.

Field	Description
High School	Name of the high school the student attends
Student ID	Unique, district-assigned student ID, which can contain alphanumeric characters
Email	Student email address that they will use to log in to their Overgrad account
First Name	Student's first name
Last Name	Student's last name
Graduation Year	The year that the student is expected to graduate. The year format is yyyy.

Optional Fields

Beyond the required fields, there are many additional fields you can include when creating student accounts — or add and update in bulk at any time after accounts are created. This includes things like demographic information, contact details, date of birth, class rank, assigned counselor, and much more. To include any of this, simply add a column in your spreadsheet for each field you want to populate.

For a full list of supported data fields, visit the student importer page in Overgrad.

Still need help? Contact the Overgrad support team at support@overgrad.com.