Also I am having issue even using the alias without the DB::raw.

Like this in this example:

->select('applicationAssessment.applicationID AS appID',...........)..........
->groupBy('appID')

I still get the Column appID (in this case) not found?

Post the sql output

select 
        `applicationAssessment`.`applicationID` as `appID`, 
        CONCAT(student.lastName, ", ", student.firstName) as name, 
        ROUND (AVG(applicationAssessment.total), 2) + studentDemographics.GPA AS Score, 
         ..............(other non relevant stuff here like joins and what not)
        group by `appID`"

I copy/paste word for word the entire query (I'm not showing it all for readability purposes) and it works in SequalPro (OSX) but not in laravel 4

Convert your laravel query to plain text with toSql() and execute with laravel DB::select ,worked for me.

$result_query = $query->toSql(); $result = DB::select(DB::raw($result_query));