All About Academic Credential Evaluations

 

What is an Academic Credential?

For the purposes of an academic credential evaluation, your academic credentials – also known as your transcripts, mark sheets, grade sheets, score sheets, and the associated diploma or degree (if applicable) – are the official documents that contain the complete record of your academic history. Your educational credentials are generated by your current or former educational institution.

What is an Academic Credential Evaluation?

When seeking admission to an educational institution such as a high school, college or university, employment or an immigration application/visa where a specific educational level is required, the prospective institutions, employer or USCIS will want to review your prior academic credentials. If your education was earned in a country other than the United States or Canada, a detailed academic credential evaluation is required – this compares your prior academic records to the equivalent U.S. or Canadian standards, and certifies them to the equivalent level.

Why Do You Need an Academic Credential Evaluation?

There are almost 200 countries in the world with their own regulations and requirements related to applying for, and graduating from, a particular course of study. Each country may have tens of thousands of schools, colleges and universities, and each educational jurisdiction may have its own set of prerequisite admission requirements, course studies, credits earned and scoring (among many other factors).

When you leave a country with a particular educational achievement, it may or may not equate to the same academic level in a different country. The academic credential evaluation process ‘standardizes’ your prior studies and provides a certification of academic equivalency for those studies you earned from the source country as compared to the target country. For continuing education in particular, a full academic credential evaluation is needed to ensure that your prior credits and courses are utilized by the institution for your future studies, ensuring that you don’t duplicate prior studies or courses (this can save you considerable time and money), or miss needed courses important for the completion and success in your continuing education.

Types of Academic Credential Evaluations

There are two types of academic evaluations:

Course by Course (CBC) Evaluations

For both continuing education or immigration purposes, you will invariably need to complete a CBC evaluation. A CBC evaluation is the ‘gold standard’ academic evaluation, and assesses your graduation certificates, each course of study completed, credits earned for each course and your overall studies, and grades achieved in each course and for your overall studies (Grade Point Average, or GPA). A CBC academic evaluation enables the evaluation agency to certify the equivalent degree based on the complete set of equivalent courses, grades and credits within the target country’s education system.

Most credential evaluation agencies’ CBC evaluations are 3-4 pages long, but our course by course academic evaluations are the most complete in the industry, and are typically 6-10 pages long. This is because we not only include the foregoing information, but also information about the post-secondary school you attended, our evaluation methodology, citations from our academic evaluation library, and the resume of the evaluator.

Being the gold standard and most complete analysis available, our course by course academic evaluations have guaranteed acceptance for work, immigration and continuing education purposes.

General Evaluation

A general evaluation (also known as ‘document by document’) evaluates only your graduation certificate, so is a less extensive academic analysis than a CBC evaluation. Our agency will issue a statement of equivalency as to your degree within the target country. Since there are no courses assessed, the general academic evaluation does not include any course information, grades or credit calculations.

While other evaluation agencies’ general evaluations are only 1-2 pages, our general evaluations are typically 3-4 pages long. We include information about the post-secondary school you attended, our evaluation methodology, citations from our educational evaluation library, and the resume of the evaluator.

Since a general evaluation is limited in nature, it is only used to certify a particular diploma or degree level (e.g. high school diploma), and is mostly used by vocational schools, and to determine eligibility for financial aid. While most employers prefer course by course evaluations, certain employers may specify that a general evaluation is sufficient.

 

The Credential Evaluation Process

There are two methods of academic evaluation, the main difference being how your academic documents are delivered to the evaluating agency. As shown below, clients who send their academic credentials directly to the agency for evaluation enjoy many advantages over those who do not…

Client-to-Agency Academic Evaluation:

For this method, you simply email a picture or scan of your academic credentials to the evaluating agency, which reviews the documents and emails a quote back. An invoice is generated that be paid securely online or over the phone. Your order can be activated in minutes, and from there, the agency will follow their normal evaluation process.

Advantages: Speed; convenience; no application forms; significantly lower cost; guaranteed acceptance; translation services; no expiration
  1. Speed. Since the credentials to be evaluated are delivered in minutes instead of weeks or months, your academic valuation can be started right away, and with rush services can be completed the same day.
  2. Convenience. Simply use your phone to take a picture of your documents and send them via email or text. Your credentials can be assessed immediately for evaluation.
  3. No Application Forms Needed. Only your basic contact information is required (name, phone number and email address) to start your academic evaluation.
  4. Lower Cost. Because the entire process is faster, these agencies are able to keep their costs lower, which is reflected in significantly lower academic evaluation costs.
  5. Guaranteed Acceptance. Many agencies using this academic evaluation method offer acceptance guarantees for their work.
  6. Translation Services Available. The most sophisticated academic evaluation agencies integrate translation into their entire document management processes, making it easy to provide you with certified translation translations as part of your overall credential evaluation process.
  7. No Evaluation Expiration. Many of these agencies do no expire your academic evaluation, which means you only have to pay once to complete this process.

Disadvantages: No document authentication (by agency)

  1. While your prior school can certainly send your documents directly to the agency for authentication purposes, they typically do not, so these agencies don’t generally authenticate your documents . However, the end-user of the academic evaluation (e.g. the school or employer) can do so, and they can also readily assess whether they will accept the original academic credentials you provide to them.
School-to-Agency Credential Evaluation:

For this method, you will complete an application form and pay the evaluation agency their fees. Once paid, your order is in-process and the agency will then request your academic credentials be mailed directly from your prior school to the evaluation agency. Once the agency received your academic credentials, the agency will follow their normal evaluation process.

Disadvantages: Length of time to complete; ability to complete; high cost; no refunds; long application process; no translation services; documents expire
  1. It Takes a Lot Longer. Sometimes this process can take many weeks or months. Although these agencies may advertise that their academic evaluation will only take 1-4 weeks, they actually mean it will take 1-4 weeks after they received your educational credentials in the mail from your prior school. Some schools are efficient and deliver the documentation within a few weeks, however, in many parts of the world the document retention and retrieval process is not as efficient, and it may take many weeks or months before the evaluation agency can even start your project.
  2. Can’t Start Your Project. Many schools no longer exist or do not forward your transcripts. In these cases, many months may pass before you find out that that the agency is unable to proceed with your academic evaluation.
  3. More Expensive. Due to the inefficiency of this academic evaluation method, agencies will charge significantly higher fees in order to compensate for all the manual steps that must occur. In some cases, agency fees can be double or triple other agencies!
  4. No Refunds. Read the fine print! Virtually all academic evaluation agencies that require documents to be mailed to them have strict ‘no refund’ policies. Once you pay, you won’t receive your money back, even if they can’t complete your evaluation.
  5. Lengthy Application Process. Since these agencies request original documents in the mail on your behalf, you’re required to complete lengthy (and often confusing) application forms.
  6. No Translation Services. Most agencies requesting document be mailed to them directly do not provide translation services, forcing you to first have your documents translated by a third-party affiliate (who often charge two to four times as much as competitive translation agencies). They can do this because they control your documents.
  7. Your Evaluation Expires. Many of these agencies will place a 5 year expiration on your academic evaluation, which means you may have to go through the entire process and expense again.

 Advantages: Document authentication

  1. By receiving the documents in the mail from your prior school, the agency is considered to have authenticated them.

 

Other Considerations

Translations – if translation services are offered, ensure the academic evaluation agency is an American Translators Association member, and that certified translations are mailed with your credential evaluation.

Refund Policy – ask your agency if they offer guaranteed acceptance of your academic evaluation at all schools, colleges, universities, employers and for immigration . They should refund you if your evaluation is not accepted.

Accredited Evaluation Agency– steer clear of agencies that aren’t accredited by the Better Business Bureau!

No Alterations – do not doctor your academic documents. Reputable academic evaluation agencies will not only refuse to evaluate documents they suspect are fraudulent, but they will share your name with other agencies to ensure industry integrity.

Complete Academic Documentation – for efficiency, try to provide all your foreign academic documents to the evaluation agency together, as most agencies will charge additional fees to modify a completed academic evaluation.