Oh I see. You wanted it to be `async:false` because you want to defer the definition of the tests until you have the response. I'd like to propose an alternative. Something like this:

```javascript
describe("Transcript parsing", function() {
  var parsedTranscriptPromise = $.get('/sample_transcript.txt').then(function(response) {
    return transcript_js.parseTranscript(transcript);
  });

  it('extracts student number', function(done) {
    parsedTranscriptPromise.then(function(transcript) {
      expect(parsedTranscript.studentId).to.equal(20331374);
    });
  });
});
```

This uses a JavaScript construct called a "Promise". You can read a bit more about them

here: https://api.jquery.com/jQuery.get/

and here: https://api.jquery.com/deferred.promise/

(I didn't test the above code, so you might need to fiddle around with using `done()` instead of `then()` to get the result you want).

Ideally, the _definition_ of all the tests can be done synchronously, then the actual running of the tests can be asynchronous.