I had my education assessed in Canada in two weeks without diplomas

I will talk about the new simplified credential assessment program at WES, how much it costs, how to translate documents, and why I needed the evaluation after 6 years of living in Canada.

What is WES

WES is one of several Canadian organizations that are dedicated to comparing education obtained in other countries with the Canadian equivalent.

According to the WES report, my degrees are bachelor's and master's. I studied programming for 5 years and got a specialist diploma. I had to study for 6 years for a master's degree, but 5 years were enough for Canada. So now I am not just a blogger and co-owner of a Canadian immigration company, I am also a master of computer science.

I have never had my diploma evaluated before, my family and I originally immigrated to the province of Quebec. In 2011, we just had our diplomas and grades translated into French. Now, most immigration programs give points for diplomas or there are minimum education requirements. So you will have to do a diploma evaluation with the WES or similar organization to immigrate.

When we moved to Canada, I left my diplomas in Kyiv, and I only have low-quality black-and-white pictures.

I didn't think that I would ever need my education documents again. 

But I decided to gain new knowledge and applied to the University in Toronto, I was accepted, but for final admission, I was required to provide a Canadian diploma or educational credentials assessment.

Simplified diploma evaluation program

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There is a war in Ukraine right now, my relatives managed to leave the country and there is no way to send diplomas to WES. Fortunately, I have the result thanks to a new program called WES Gateway. It works through Canadian partner organizations for people who were educated in several countries:

• Afghanistan;
• Eritrea;
• Iraq;
• Syria;
• Turkey;
• Ukraine;
• Venezuela.

You only need to have at least one valid certificate issued by an educational institution. Scans are also suitable.

I will tell you step by step what to do, based on my personal experience. I live in the capital of Canada and there is only one organization from Ottawa on the list of partners. I went to its website and it was a help center for immigrants and refugees, which you can contact for other questions, not only for education evaluation. For example, to learn English, to find a job, or to get information on adaptation.

Step-by-step process

On July 4, I filled out a form on the help center's website describing my situation, and I received no confirmation in response. Time is running out, the Canadian university where I previously enrolled only gave me time until the end of the summer. I found on the site that it is possible to sign up, I provided a lot of personal information, but in the end, I got an error. This is normal for Canadian sites, they crash all the time, so be prepared for difficulties. I was about to go in person to the help center office but on July 11, I received an email with a request for educational documents and an appointment for a video call.

The call consisted of a woman from the organization creating a profile for me in the WES Gateway and entering educational data, which I wrote to her in the chat room. Everything was Canadian: that is, very friendly.

Next, I had to upload scans of my diplomas to the WES account and pay for the educational evaluation procedure. I paid about $220 CAD for everything with taxes. I uploaded black-and-white translations of diplomas made in 2011 in Kyiv in French. I decided to take extra precautions with the grades and have them translated into English by a Canadian licensed translator. I think an ordinary translation would have been enough, too.

A couple of weeks later, 16 days to be exact, WES completed the process of assessing my diplomas and sent the result of the evaluation to my email.

I am leaving contacts of a certified translator for immigration, employment, or universities. The person is a member of all the Canadian translator organizations, translates from different languages, and accepts different types of payment. You can send him your documents for translation, and he will calculate the cost. If you mention the code phrase "immigrant.today," you will get a 10% discount.

If WES Gateway is not suitable for you and you need help with assessment of diplomas according to the usual, more complicated scheme, contact us, we will help. Our Canadian immigration company provides this service.

Alex Pavlenko, founder of Immigrant.Today