Hi!

We are back with the next step of the Express Entry process- getting your education validated through the ECA process. This is needed to create your profile and submit your application into the pool. There are multiple agencies who can do this for you, I listed the top 3 below in order of ease.

Agencies:

  • World Education Services (WES) is the most popular option for Canada. They are a great service with generally smooth experience. The only issues we have seen is for universities not affiliated to WES, which brings us to:
  • International Qualification Assessment Service (IQAS) is a good backup option, specifically for distance learning and online education certificates. They tend to take longer than WES to produce the ECA, but is a good option if WES cannot validate your certificates
  • ICAS is the third option for ECAs for Canada immigration. Similar to IQAS, they are a good fallback option for verification if WES does not validate your ECA for any reason

Usual Procedures:

The usual procedure for all 3 agencies are very similar. You follow the same basic steps:

  • Create an account and select all degrees that need to be validated. We recommend you validate all degrees starting from your bachelors degrees onwards. Remember that diplomas also count towards your scores!
  • Once you have selected all the necessary degrees/ diplomas, you have to pay the fees. The fees vary between the agencies but are close.
  • After you have paid the fees, you need to reach out to your college/ university and get your transcripts. Remember that the transcripts should either be sent directly to the agency or the sealed transcripts should be gathered by you and sent to the agency. It is critical for the transcripts to be sealed! Opened transcripts will not be processed by WES.
  • The transcripts for each degree/ diploma needs to be sent the same way. Once you have done this, just wait for the final assessment to be completed.
  • Post-completion of a successful assessment, you will be able to download the certificate and a hard copy of the ECA will be sent to your billing address
  • If one agency does not validate your certificates, feel free to send it to other agencies. You will need to pay the fees again, but remember these are just one time expenses 🙂

Once you have the ECA, you are set to move on to the next step. Look out for the detailed post to be published next week!

Regards,

The Eagles