7. Education Credential Assessment Process

I just received my ECA report from WES and would like to share some thoughts on that.  

Purpose of Education Credential Assessment (ECA) Report

For all academic degrees and diplomas foreign to Canada and for which you wish to claim points, Canada requires an assessment to ensure they meet the country's academic standards and are bona fide.  

Getting ECA 

• Where: Canadian immigration department (IRCC) has an approved list of agencies for ECA, of which WES is the most popular and the one we used.

• Degrees to be evaluated: Ideally, you want to get the highest level of education assessed.  For example, you may only need to have Master's degree assessed and not underlying bachelor's degree as well.  There are exceptions though. 

Requirements for a Master's degree differ between countries and even disciplines.   A Master's degree in Engineering may be assessed higher than that in Archeology.   

I've come across forums where candidates have expressed disappointment when their MBA (Masters in Business Administration) was assessed as a diploma and not a full Masters.   This is especially true with candidates from Asian countries like India where number of semesters required to achieve MBA is often less than that in Americas.   In such a case, the candidate MUST have BOTH bachelors degree and masters degree assessed to get maximum points of 128 or 119 (w/o or w/ spouse, respectively) under the following criteria: 

Two or more certificates, diplomas, or degrees. One must be for a program of three or more years

The highlighted sentence stipulates that one of the degrees MUST be a bachelors degree.  But it's still better if Masters degree is assessed as such because that holds 135 or 128 maximum points (w/o or w/ spouse). 

Important: if you are a candidate from Africa or Asia and hold a Masters degree from a University in your home country, I strongly recommend having both Masters and Bachelors assessed AT THE SAME TIME.  Doing so, agency will assess BOTH degrees as part of one application for no extra charges.  Otherwise, if Masters is assessed as a diploma, and you THEN wish to have Bachelors assessed, that would count as a new application with applicable charges! 

I do not have a reason to believe that candidates with American degrees need to be concerned of devaluation.  

• Documents Needed: It is applicant's responsibility to arrange official records from their alma mater.   From colleges in US, on an average, it may take up to 10-15 business days for ECA agency to receive credentials.  From other countries, this period maybe more than a month.

Note: if you choose to use e-delivery method, make sure that electronic access to your documents is unrestricted (no password or time-limit).  For most US colleges, this is not the case (including mine).  Therefore, I decided to send both through snail mail and electronically.  Although, going by the timeline provided by the agency, hard copy version was the one which was considered. 

After ECA agency receives credentials, allow at least 30-60 business days for production of ECA report. 

In the next post, I will share my ECA report to familiarize with its format.