What is a Student Experience Record (SER)
Your Student Experience Record (SER) is an official record of your participation in experiential learning both inside and outside the classroom at McGill University. While the academic transcript shows your successes in the classroom, the SER captures the experiences that contribute to your learning outside of it. Your SER can be a useful tool for showcasing your learning, highlighting the skills you’ve developed, and exploring new opportunities!
The McGill Student Experience Record (SER) currently includes ten categories of experience. You can learn more about each experience type and explore opportunities through the Student Experience Catalogue.
Why Use Your SER
Participating in co-curricular activities helps you develop career readiness by providing opportunities to:
- Explore different roles and work environments
- Build transferable skills and professional competencies
- Gain practical experience in a field of interest
- Increase self-awareness and confidence through reflection
These experiences can help you better understand your interests and strengths. Students who actively engage in co-curricular opportunities will often have more examples to draw upon when exploring new career paths, applying to positions, or pursuing further studies. Your SER helps you document and reflect on these experiences, making it easier to identify, articulate, and showcase the skills you have developed to academic/career advisors, supervisors, employers, graduate schools and other opportunities.
How to Use Your SER
The way you use your SER may vary depending on where you are in your academic journey and what you hope to achieve. If you are in the early years of your program, you may be exploring different opportunities and looking for ways to get involved. The Student Experience Catalogue is a great place to discover SER-eligible opportunities.
If you are approaching graduation, your SER can help you reflect on the experiences you've participated in throughout your degree. As you review your SER, consider what you learned, what challenges you encountered, and how the experience contributed to your personal, academic, or professional development. Reflecting on these experiences can help you better articulate your skills and accomplishments in applications, interviews, and conversations about your future goals.
Your SER can be a great tool to help you keep track of your involvement and reflect on what you have learned from your experiences. Here are some ways your SER can help:
Writing your CV, cover letter, or letter of intent
Your SER provides a record of activities and experiences and serves as a tool for reflecting on your involvement to identify the skills you developed, applied, or enhanced through each activity. When an experience demonstrates relevant skills and knowledge, consider highlighting it in your application materials.
Preparing for job and university applications
If an application provides the option to attach supporting documents, consider including a customized version of your SER if it showcases experiences that demonstrate the qualities, skills, or achievements relevant to the opportunity.
Preparing for job and academic interviews
Interviews provide an opportunity to convey who you are and what you can contribute to the position or academic program that interests you. Reviewing your SER can help you identify relevant experiences, including challenges you have overcome, projects you have contributed to, leadership roles you have held, interests you have explored, and skills you have developed. Drawing on these experiences can help you answer interview questions with concrete examples that demonstrate your skills, accomplishments, and growth.
Preparing for a meeting with a career counsellor, academic advisor, or supervisor
Your SER can also serve as a resource for conversations about future opportunities, career planning, academic pathways, and personal development. Sharing your SER with a career counsellor, academic advisor, supervisor, or other university support professional can help them better understand your experiences, interests, and goals, allowing them to provide more tailored guidance and support.
How to Access Your SER
All currently enrolled McGill students1 can access, customize, print, and share their SER through myFuture. You can customize a public profile and share the link with employers, graduate schools, and professional contacts, including on LinkedIn. You can choose which experiences appear on your public profile and tailor the record for different audiences or opportunities.
Alumni who graduated before Fall 2025 and need their official Co-Curricular Record (CCR) for applications can request it from the Career Planning Service (CaPS).
1 View myFuture eligibility.
How to Get an Experience Added to the SER
CaPS partners with campus organizations to recognize eligible experiences on students’ SERs. McGill departments, offices, faculties, or student organizations submit participation records to the SER team. As a result, eligible experiences may not appear immediately after you participate and may take some time to be processed and added to your record.
If you participate in an opportunity that meets the SER eligibility requirements but is not currently recognized, contact the facilitator or organizer about having the opportunity recognized or connecting with our office. They can find information on how staff can recognize students on the SER on our website.
If you are a student leader interested in recognizing participants in an eligible activity, information about the recognition process for student organizations is also available on our website.
If you have further questions about the recognition process or a specific opportunity, please contact us at experiencerecord [at] mcgill.ca (experiencerecord[at]mcgill[dot]ca).