What Happens if You Lost Your Diploma from High School?

What Happens if You Lost Your Diploma from High School?

What happens if you lost your diploma from high school? If you need your high school diploma but can't seem to find it, here's what you need to do.

Did you know that 86% of high schoolers in the United States graduate with a diploma within four years? This means there are plenty of people each year who receive a high school diploma.

Where does that diploma go after? If you're living with your parents at first, likely not on your wall. It probably went in a box when you moved, meaning it could be lost in the shuffle between houses.

This broaches an important question - what happens if you lost your diploma? Do you really need a diploma? How do you get a new high school diploma if your lost diploma can't be found?

We'll answer all of these questions for you as you read on. By the time you're finished, you'll see that there's no need to panic over a missing diploma. All you need to do to fix the situation is to follow the instructions that we'll give you.

Why Do You Need a High School Diploma?

There are plenty of reasons that you might need to have your high school diploma on hand. 

Some of these reasons are personal. You may want it for sentimentality purposes, or to show it to your children one day to motivate them. You may want to hang it on your wall as a sign of your achievements. 

However, your need for a diploma could come from more professional reasoning rather than personal. For example, although transcripts are what prove you graduated, a potential employer could want to see your high school diploma. People recruiting for the army, in particular, might need to see the diploma itself and not transcripts.

In addition, having access to all of your important documents can be essential. If you are not putting your diploma in a place to show it off, you'll want to keep it in a safe with other documents.

These can include things such as high school or college transcripts, birth or marriage certificates, shot records, and social security cards.

Regardless of your reasoning for having it, it's a good idea to know where your diploma is.

What Happens if You Lost Your Diploma?

If your high school diploma has gone missing, there is no need to panic. Before you spend any money or start worrying, conduct a thorough search of your house to try and find the diploma. 

You don't need to clean your house top to bottom, but you should look in every place you think it could be. For some, this will be the safe or drawer where you keep all of your important documents. 

For others, you can look in your office, if you had it displayed somewhere and now it's not there. Or, if you consider it more sentimental than important, you can look in with your sentimental items like where you keep the scrapbooks.

If you've looked everywhere and it hasn't turned up, that's okay. You have two different options. You can choose to contact your high school for a copy of your diploma, or you can choose to buy a replacement diploma off the internet.

How to Get a Copy of Your High School Diploma

The first step in getting copies of diplomas is to know who to contact. Depending on how long ago you graduated, your records will be stored in different places. You will need to contact different offices, or in some cases the actual school board.

Once you've figured out who to contact, you send in a simple request with official documentation confirming you are who you say you are. Some schools may want a formal request letter instead.

Of course, this isn't always as simple as it sounds. It can be really easy for your requests to get wrapped up in all the red tape and delayed by huge amounts. If this happens, then you may find you don't have time to go the official route.

This leads to your next option- buying a replacement.

Buying Replacement High School Diplomas

Buying a replacement high school diploma can be the better option because it's a simpler route than going through all of the layers of formality you have to with your old school. It also saves you from having to deal with ridiculously long delays.

Best of all, buying a high school diploma this way is completely legal, so long as you buy it for the high school you attended. As there will be records of you at that high school, it serves as a legal replacement diploma. 

Replacing a lost diploma this way is easy and involves a delay of only days rather than weeks or months. All you have to do is choose the design you want and fill in the needed information.

Even if you haven't lost your diploma, you could buy this to use as the one you display while your official diploma is secure with other necessary documentation.

Buy a Replacement Diploma Today

Now that we've answered your biggest question - what happens if you lost your diploma - you are ready to get to work getting that diploma replaced. If your high school cannot help you, then you know where to go.

We make excellent copies of diplomas that will look natural hanging up on your wall. More importantly, they will serve the purpose that you bought the replacement diploma for.

To get your high school diploma replaced, start looking through our store today to find the best design for you.