Undergraduate students enrolled in the UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science, or L&S, can now use a new program on CalCentral to check their progress in both their major and college requirements.

The Academic Progress Report, or APR, tool has been made available to students as of Sunday. The tool currently lists all the requirements for about one-third of the majors offered in L&S, with the rest of the majors currently in the process of being reviewed and validated before they will be made available on the tool.

Bob Jacobsen, campus physics professor and Dean of Undergraduate Studies in L&S, said the main objective of the APR tool is to provide information to students about their current academic progress and help them with their future scheduling plans.

“This is one central system that shows everything all at once, so the process is more likely to be correct,” Jacobsen said.

The development of this tool, according to Jacobsen, was prompted by the retirement of DARS, or the Degree Audit Reporting System. DARS was an online program that showed students their academic records, including their completed courses from UC Berkeley as well as their transfer credit.

Jacobsen added that the APR tool is currently unavailable to certain groups of students such as graduate students and students in different colleges, including the Haas School of Business and the College of Engineering.

Jinhang Huang, a campus junior transfer student majoring in economics, said [that] despite the somewhat slow loading time, the APR tool is generally useful.

“I’m a transfer, so I’m not so familiar with CalCentral,” Huang said. “I think it would be better if it could also show the dates of registration.”

Displaying his GPA from his transfer institution would also be an improvement, Huang said.

ASUC Senator Adnan Hemani, however, said the tool still has a few significant flaws. Hemani called the user interface “utter garbage,” and added that the tool’s limitations to one college and only a few majors within that college could pose problems with its overall performance. At the moment, Hemani said, the tool does not seem finished.

“From a tech perspective, there’s still many problems with this tool,” Hemani said. “In general, campus technology is not up to usability like it should be. … Honestly, the best way is still your major adviser, which are in short supply.”

Contact Naira Khalid at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @nairakhalid.