Overview of the ECE® foreign transcript evaluation process
You may be asking yourself, 'What is the foreign transcript evaluation process?' or 'What steps are involved in a foreign transcript evaluation?' The ECE® credential evaluation process can be broken down into four steps. Each one plays an important part and must be included to ensure an evaluation report can be completed.
The first step involves our evaluators confirming that we have received all the required documents for the country or territory in which you studied.
Second, we review the documents to ensure they are authentic and issued by the duly recognized institution.
Third, our analysts evaluate the documents and assess the equivalency for U.S. or Canadian education standards.
In the fourth step, the evaluator issues the credential evaluation report. It is then distributed according to your requirements.
Getting started: ordering an ECE® credential evaluation
Once you’ve made the sound decision to order an evaluation from ECE you’ll want to create your own account to start the application process.
The online application is where you’ll provide ECE with the information used to develop the evaluation.
Don’t forget to list all your education starting with secondary school.
You’ll want to determine which type of ECE® evaluation report to request. The Course by Course is our #1 selling report and can be used in most cases, but it’s always helpful to contact your school, licensing board, employer, or immigration attorney to discover what type of report they require.
Be sure to make your payment within our secure site using a credit card. If you don’t make your payment right away, we will automatically send you a reminder to make your payment.
On our website, you can use a Country Documentation drop down menu to discover what the credential requirements are for your own documents.
You might be able to send your educational documents to us right away or you might need to contact your school or another educational authority in your home country for the documents to be sent to us. This might take a bit of time if they have to mail materials to ECE. If they submit documents electronically it will go faster.
Years and years of research and experience have gone into ECE determining what documents are official from your country and acceptable for an assessment report. Don’t forget this important step.
To check the status of your order at anytime you can login to your account.
Steps in the ECE® transcript evaluation process
Step 1: Document scanning
Once you enter your information, our Document Specialist will review your application and check to make sure we have all of the required documents and verify your payment has been accepted. If we still do not have a payment or your documents, we will send you reminders.
When the documents and payment are received, the Document Specialist will scan your documents into our system, making notes for the evaluator about the various document features. Once this is completed, your file will now be given to a country specialist evaluator for a thorough review.
And this leads to us how we produce the final evaluation report.
Step 2: Document review and authentication
Now that your file is in the hands of one of our professional evaluators, let’s discover what they do.
Upon receiving your file, which includes your application information as well as the credentials you submitted, the evaluator will review the credentials to make sure they are in the proper format, with the correct school seals, stamps, or signatures, and all other features that are required for us to determine that the credentials are official.
These documents may or may not include a report of the quality and quantity of your educational work, such as grades, hours of study, or credits.
If the credentials that were submitted do not meet our professional documentation standards, we will send a request to you for more documents. If you married after you graduated from your home institution, we might need to ask for proof of your name change.
You will then submit or request your institution to submit more documents to us. Once we receive all of the updated credentials, our Document Specialist will scan these documents and your file will once again be reviewed by the Evaluator.
Step 3: Analysis of your education and degree equivalency achieved
If we have the documents, payment, and other information that may be needed, your file will then be considered “Complete” and the Evaluator will start assessing your credentials. Our evaluators are trained in country-specific educational systems and are experts at handling and reviewing your educational documents.
This assessment will determine any or all of the following: the recognition of your institution in your home country, if that school is equivalent to a school in the United States or Canada and what was the name of your qualification and what might it be equivalent to in the United States or Canada.
The Evaluator will determine if the courses you had taken in your study program may need to be converted to the U.S. or Canadian grades and semester hours of credit. There might be additional information added to the report at this time as well.
The Evaluator will then move the file onto their Associate, who will calculate the Grade Point Average, type the courses if needed for the assessment, and add any additional information.
Before the completed report is prepared for printing and mailing, our Senior Evaluator staff will check the report as part of our Quality Assurance step, making sure that the evaluator has prepared the assessment in the correct manner with the professional standards we follow.
Step 4: Evaluation report production and order fulfillment
Once the review is completed, the evaluation report is sent to our Order Fulfillment personnel who will check that all information in our database is correct for printing the report, packing it with any returnable credentials, and mailing it to the correct address that you have provided us. At this point your order is marked “Complete.”
Your application for an assessment report has been done and you will receive the report electronically and if you requested a paper copy it will be sent via the delivery service you selected.
We are here to help you every step of the way
The report is valid for five years and you can order copies of your report during that time frame. Don’t worry about forgetting when you ordered your report. We’ll send regular reminders about when you can no longer order copies.
Should you have questions, contact our Customer Care Specialists who are trained to help you every step of the way; from your initial order for an evaluation report to ordering copies.
Why Trust ECE®?
At Educational Credential Evaluators (ECE), we’ve spent over 40 years perfecting the credential evaluation process, helping students, professionals, and institutions navigate international education with confidence.
Decades of Expertise
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With 500+ years of combined experience, our evaluators have completed over 800,000 evaluations from students in 190 countries. This extensive experience ensures accurate, reliable assessments that are trusted by over 2,000 institutions in the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand.
Why Choose ECE®?
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Experience You Can Trust: Over 40 years of expertise in credential evaluations.
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Fast & Accurate: 24-hour response time and a 90% satisfaction rate.
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Global Reach: Serving individuals from 190 countries and supporting international education.
When you choose ECE, you're choosing accuracy, integrity, and over four decades of experience in educational credential evaluations.