Credential Evaluation: Getting Your Degree Recognised Abroad

Credential evaluation is the step that turns your Nigerian, Ghanaian, Kenyan, Indian, Pakistani or Filipino degree into something a foreign university, employer or immigration system will accept. It is rarely expensive. It is frequently the thing that delays everything else by months, and almost always for the same avoidable reason.

The Short Answer

You pay an approved body to compare your qualification to the local system and issue a report. The fee is $70–$240. The bottleneck is not the evaluator — it is your own university’s registry, because your transcripts must be sent directly by the institution, not by you.

Which Evaluator, For Which Country

Canada is the only one of the four with a definitive government list. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada designates exactly five organisations for an Educational Credential Assessment:

• Comparative Education Service, University of Toronto
• International Credential Assessment Service of Canada (ICAS)
• World Education Services (WES)
• International Qualifications Assessment Service (IQAS), Alberta
• International Credential Evaluation Service (ICES), BCIT

Separate professional bodies handle architects, doctors and pharmacists. Anything not on that list is not an ECA, whatever it calls itself — which is the cleanest fraud protection available in this whole area.

The United States has no government designation. The de facto standard is membership of NACES, which covers WES and ECE. Individual universities set their own rule, and some name one evaluator exclusively — so check the specific programme’s page rather than assuming.

The UK uses Ecctis, formerly UK NARIC, which issues a Statement of Comparability. Note what this is: an advisory comparison for employment, further study and professional registration. A university or regulator can still reach its own conclusion.

Australia does not use general credential evaluation at all. It runs occupation-based skills assessment, and the assessing authority is tied to your occupation code — VETASSESS, ACS for IT, Engineers Australia, ANMAC for nursing, AITSL for teaching, CPA or CAANZ for accounting, TRA for trades. Different process, different paperwork.

What It Costs

Body	Service	Fee
WES (US)	Document-by-Document	US$118 (US$171 with ICAP)
WES (US)	Course-by-Course	US$186 (US$239 with ICAP)
WES	ECA for Canadian immigration	C$264
WES (Canada)	Course-by-Course	C$242 (C$284 ICAP), plus 13% HST
ECE	Course-by-Course	US$199 (US$244 with Insignia)
ECE	General with grade average	US$135
ICES	ECA	C$200 — no refunds
ICAS	Canadian Immigration Assessment	C$231, tax included
Ecctis	Statement of Comparability	£69.60

Add delivery, which is not trivial: international courier runs to US$86 or C$97, and sealed envelopes cost $9–$14 each. ECE’s US$85 Translation Waiver covers all your translations in one payment and is the cheapest route if your transcripts are not in English.

One distinction people constantly get wrong: a WES ECA and a WES general evaluation are different products at different prices. Buying the wrong one means paying twice.

We could not verify current IQAS or Comparative Education Service fees, or Australian assessing-authority fees, so we are not quoting any.

How Long It Really Takes

WES publishes roughly two weeks for document verification, then one to four weeks for the evaluation itself depending on report type. Ecctis quotes fifteen working days.

ICAS averages twenty weeks. That is not a typo, and it is the single most useful comparison in this article. If you are choosing an ECA provider on speed, that difference is five months of your life.

But read all those figures carefully: they measure the evaluator’s own processing only. None of them includes the time your university takes to respond. WES resends verification requests every three weeks until it gets an answer, and responses range from days to months.

Plan on two to three months end to end at best, and six or more where your institution is slow. That is our synthesis rather than a published figure, but it matches how the process actually behaves.

The Document Rules That Stall Applications

Nearly every stalled evaluation comes down to one of these.

• Your institution must send the documents. WES requires the educational authority to seal them and send directly. ICAS goes further and will not accept sealed envelopes handed over by the applicant at all
• One sealed envelope per institution. Combining two universities into one envelope fails
• The reference number goes on the envelope, not the documents. Writing it on your transcript causes problems
• Institutional email only. ICAS rejects Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail outright, and accepts email only from a registrar or controller of examinations
• Names and dates must match exactly between your documents and your application form. A mismatched spelling or programme title triggers secondary verification

WES names three triggers for that secondary verification: routine anti-fraud sampling, documents that differ from what it usually receives from your institution, and information that does not match your application. Once triggered, WES cannot issue your report until the institution responds — and there is no appeal against an unresponsive registrar.

Two more traps worth naming. ICES issues no refunds on ECA applications and Ecctis becomes non-refundable once assessment begins. And a Canadian ECA must be less than five years old at both profile completion and submission — so an evaluation obtained early can quietly expire while you wait for an invitation.

Country-Specific Requirements

WES publishes document requirements that vary by country, institution and credential, through its Required Documents tool. It also maintains a directory of institutional contacts that specifically covers China, India, Iran, Nigeria and Pakistan — a fair signal about which education systems cause the most friction.

For Nigeria, WES confirms it uses the WAEC digital platform to authenticate academic documents, and directs holders of secondary certificates there.

Beyond that we are going to be straight with you. WES’s Required Documents tool is an interactive application we could not read programmatically, so we cannot confirm the per-country lists. Specifically unverified: whether WES requires NYSC certificates from Nigerians, whether it requires DFA or CHED authentication from Filipinos, and how India’s attested-marksheet rules or Kenya’s and Ghana’s secondary certificates are handled.

Every website asserting those requirements is a consultancy or a blog rather than WES. Run the tool yourself with your actual university and credential. It takes five minutes and it is the only answer that binds.

Fraud and Agents

WES’s verification process exists explicitly to catch fraudulent submissions, and it sends your documents back to your issuing institution to confirm them. Ecctis offers Primary Source Verification, checking directly with the awarding institution.

We should be honest about what we did not find: no WES page stating the consequences of submitting falsified documents, and no IRCC, WES or Ecctis warning about third-party agents — despite a large ecosystem of paid intermediaries around WES applications in Nigeria and India. We are not going to imply an official warning exists where we could not find one.

What we can say with confidence: you do not need an agent. You apply directly, your university sends the documents directly, and for Canada anything outside those five designated organisations is not an ECA at all.

Credential Evaluation FAQ

Can I send my own transcripts to WES?

No. WES requires your institution to seal the documents and send them directly, or transmit them securely by electronic means. ICAS explicitly refuses sealed envelopes handed over by the applicant.

How much does a credential evaluation cost?

Between about £70 and US$240 depending on the body and report type — Ecctis £69.60, WES US$118–$239, ECE US$110–$244, ICES C$200, ICAS C$231. Delivery and translation cost extra.

Which is fastest?

Ecctis quotes fifteen working days and WES roughly three to six weeks of its own processing. ICAS averages twenty weeks. All exclude the time your university takes to respond, which is usually the real delay.

Which evaluators does Canada accept?

Exactly five: Comparative Education Service, ICAS, WES, IQAS and ICES, plus designated professional bodies for architects, doctors and pharmacists. Nothing else qualifies as an ECA.

How long is an evaluation valid?

A Canadian ECA must be under five years old when you complete your Express Entry profile and when you submit. ICES and ICAS reports are valid five years, with ICES renewal at C$50.

Do I need an agent?

No. You apply directly to the evaluator and your institution sends documents directly to them. For Canada, only the five designated organisations can issue an ECA.

Does Australia use credential evaluation?

Not in this form. Australia uses occupation-based skills assessment through an authority tied to your occupation code, such as VETASSESS, ACS, Engineers Australia or ANMAC.

Your Next Step

Contact your university registry this week, before you pay anyone anything. Ask two questions: can you send sealed transcripts directly to an overseas evaluator, and how long does that take? The answer determines your entire timeline, and it is the one variable no evaluator controls.

Then run WES’s Required Documents tool for your own institution and credential, and work from what it says rather than from any general guide.

Once the evaluation is in hand, it unlocks the rest: our guides to Commonwealth Scholarships, MEXT scholarships in Japan and Chevening all require verified transcripts, and our guide to statements of purpose covers the document that goes with them.

Last reviewed: 22 September 2026, against the published fee and process pages of WES, ECE, ICES, ICAS and Ecctis, and IRCC’s designated-organisations page. Fees and requirements change — confirm with the body before paying. Where per-country document requirements could not be verified from the evaluator’s own system, we have said so rather than repeating third-party claims.

KINGNAMY verifies every opportunity against its official source and never charges fees.