University Credits - How to transfer

[jinx13]

 My Ukrainian girlfriend who lives here in California (one year) wants to attend a University here, and is having problems figuring out how to tranfer her credits. She has completed 3 years at Sumy State in Ukraine. California State univ. require her transcripts to be SEALED and transferred to them, but they also need them translated.

 Has anyone ever dealt with this issue? Is there a translator service that is certified to translate and re-seal transcripts and then send them to American Uni? I figure somebody here must have married a girl still attending college and she continued after moving here. Any help would be appreciated, she is getting very frustrated and thinks the only way to make it happen is to "pay off" her Ukraine University, apparently thats how it works over there.  Thanks  - David

[Jet]

What you need is a credential evaluation service talk to the University and see who's evaluations they accept. In FL we used Josef Silney & Associates in Coral Gables. We found them through www.naces.org/

[GalinaF]

Hello, my daughter transferred her credits from St Petersburg State University to NYU.  My daughter received a paper with all of her courses, semester grades, and hours from the main office of her department in SPb. Then she faxed it to me, and I translated it into English trying to be as close as possible to the names of similar courses in NYU and some other American schools.  It didn’t take me long to do some research looking through academics pages on the net.  I emailed my translation back, and my daughter signed the original paper in Russian and my translation at the main office in SPb, put both papers in an envelope, sealed the envelope, and mailed it to the university in NYC by an express mail. After 2.5 years in SPb university,  NYU counted 62 credit hours towards my daughter’s degree.

So, if your girlfriend has a paper in Russian with her semester grades and hours, you can help her to translate it into English, and then she will have to send both papers back to Sumy.  In Sumy, her friend or her mom should go to the main office and ask a secretary to sign the papers and seal the envelope. It may probably cost something, but it may be done for free – not a big deal!  Of course, there should be the university address on the envelope, so it will look as if the university itself sent the transcripts.
Good luck!

[jinx13]

 Thanks Jet and Galina,  I let my girlfriend know what you advised, and she thinks Galina had a good plan. NACES.org will not help because this University she wants to attend does not use outside services, they evaluate all the transcripts themselves.

 Galina, she is going back to Sumy for one month in summer, do you think she could just get this stamped envelope and then bring it by hand to the University here? Or maybe it would look better if it was sent directly from Sumy State by express mail? She is just afraid the post office will lose it. She also thinks it will be difficult to get the main University stamp, but she thinks she can get a faculty stamp. I'm not sure what this means but it's what her mother told her. Anyway, if you have anymore advice we would appreciate it, Thanks David & Nataly

[Jet]

If UPS is available in her mom's area (if not DHL, or FedEx) the package can be tracked door to door online, so you're wife won't worry so much. We found UPS to be the most reliable/least expensive way to get documents from there to here - 5days/$44.00 picked up at Lil's HOME in Nizhgorodskaya Oblast.

[GalinaF]

  Galina, she is going back to Sumy for one month in summer, do you think she could just get this stamped envelope and then bring it by hand to the University here? Or maybe it would look better if it was sent directly from Sumy State by express mail? She is just afraid the post office will lose it. She also thinks it will be difficult to get the main University stamp, but she thinks she can get a faculty stamp. I'm not sure what this means but it's what her mother told her. Anyway, if you have anymore advice we would appreciate it, Thanks David & Nataly

I think that it depends on the university.  Before my daughter applied to NYU, we went to Uconn and talked with some girls in their Admissions office.  They told us that it would be OK for them if my daughter would bring her sealed transcripts or enclose that sealed envelope with her application packet.  But when I tried to introduce the same idea to the officials in NYU, they were rather inflexible and said that they wouldn’t break the rule just because some other country’s mail was so unreliable… So, if you can, you’d better ask the admissions at the university your girlfriend is going to apply to.  Also, you may ask them about letters of recommendation from former teachers – there may be special forms to write such letters and they might be needed to be sealed as well.

My daughter put ‘faculty’ stamps on all of her papers; she didn’t go to the Main university office.  I meant the main office of her Faculty of Journalism when I mentioned the office where she had all the papers signed and the envelope sealed.   

[rose]

I went to CSU. After I applied, they wanted me to make a certified translation of my transcripts. The evaluation they did by themselves. There were no problems.

[2tallbill]

I don't think they got very far with this in the original thread.
I thought I would reopen the thread to see if anybody had more
information or updates.

[ML]

Not exactly the same thing . . . as my now UW wife had completed the first degree in Ukraine which is a 5 year affair and is called a diploma.

The 5 year diploma was standard for the FSU system.  And they went to school 6 days a week and nearly 11 months, so that 5 years was really equivalent to 6 plus years of university.

That 6 year idea is where many FSU folks will claim that the diploma is equivalent to our bachelors and masters.

However, most accrediting agencies will only count the diploma as a bachelors.

Anyway . . . wife never had to send any info about the diploma to the university here in USA when she wanted to go into masters program in mathematics.  And, she never took any of the standard graduate admissions tests.

The math department at the university relied totally on the evaluation of a senior math professor whose class she had sat in on when she was in the Intensive English program.  She had wanted to sit in the class just to hear more English being spoken.  But she did take all the quizzes and exams, and based on that, the professor recommended she be admitted to the masters program.

She completed the masters and now has nearly completed PhD with all A grades and many being A+.

Her situation is somewhat unique, so probably not a useful example for others.