college transcripts

[NDOC]

One of the worst headaches my wife and I encountered early on in her transition was getting the educational establishment in the US to accept Ukrainian educational documents.  The problem was that the state Education Department insisted on getting transcripts sent straight from Natalie's university and they wanted them in English.  Of course, her university grants dipolmas and you can get her dipolma translated into English by a private firm (not the university), but you can't get transcripts in English or any other language for that matter.  We presented the officially stamped translation of Natalie's dipolma and were turned down flat.  Nope, they weren't official unopened transcripts sent by her university!  I had a knock-down, drag-out argument with the bureaucrat in charge because they were asking for something that didn't exist in her country.  I explained to him that he was damn lucky one of her diplomas wasn't on a sheep-skin (like one of mine) or I'd be tossing a dead animal on his desk.  It took going all the way to the Governor's office to get the educational establishment to accept her documents.

Has anyone else had this experience and how did you get around it?

[TigerPaws]

[color="#0000ff"][size="4"][color="blue"]LoL,

 Sorry to laugh but we had a very similar problem except in  spades, my wife was born and educated in Tajikistan, the moron at the state of  California Department of Education had to look on a map because he did not know  where it was. My wife's diplomas (high school and university) were from the  former Soviet Union, she and her family were forced to leave, in addition U.S.  and Russian relations with the government of Tajikistan are not exactly on the  best of terms. After going through all of the various official channels we were  forced to take direct legal action by filing law suit, a year later the state of  California finally relented after several hearings and depositions convinced  them they would most likely loose in open court.
 A damn expensive [/color][/size][/color][color="#0000ff"][size="4"][size="4"]proposition.[/size][/size][/color][color="#0000ff"][size="4"][/size][/color]

[Admin]

One of the worst headaches my wife and I encountered early on in her transition was getting the educational establishment in the US to accept Ukrainian educational documents.  The problem was that the state Education Department insisted on getting transcripts sent straight from Natalie's university and they wanted them in English.  Of course, her university grants dipolmas and you can get her dipolma translated into English by a private firm (not the university), but you can't get transcripts in English or any other language for that matter.  We presented the officially stamped translation of Natalie's dipolma and were turned down flat.  Nope, they weren't official unopened transcripts sent by her university!  I had a knock-down, drag-out argument with the bureaucrat in charge because they were asking for something that didn't exist in her country.  I explained to him that he was damn lucky one of her diplomas wasn't on a sheep-skin (like one of mine) or I'd be tossing a dead animal on his desk.  It took going all the way to the Governor's office to get the educational establishment to accept her documents.

Has anyone else had this experience and how did you get around it?

We used World Education Services to evaluate her education and produce a US equivalency report which we submitted to the local colleges/universities.

Their website can be found at: http://www.wes.org - and here is the list of documents we had to produce:

Secondary Education
Required documents:

• Atestat pro povnu zagalnu seredniu osvitu (Certificate of Completed General Secondary Education), issued in Ukrainian [/*]
  
• Secondary school transcript, if the purpose of your evaluation is further education [/*]
  
• Precise, word-for-word English translations of all foreign-language documents

[/*]
Higher Education
Required documents:

• official academic transcript (akademichna/arkhivna dovidka), indicating all courses taken and grades earned, sent directly to WES by the institution. [/*]
  
• clear, legible photocopies of all official diplomas issued in Ukrainian (Bakalavr, Magistr, Diploma of Specialist, Kandidat Nauk, Doktor Nauk) [/*]
  
• Precise, word-for-word English translations of all foreign-language documents (since the transcript will be coming to WES directly from the institution, you can base your translation on your copy of the akademichna dovidka, or the dodatok do diploma you received upon graduation)

[/*]
The cost for the assessment and report was $150.

Documents were required to be in sealed envelopes originating from the institution in Ukraine. An option was available for the institution to fax the records, but most would not send anything by fax.

Hope this helps.

- Dan


 

[KenC]

Just an additional note on this.  After we got WES to evaluate Lena's transcript, she was disappointed when she didn't get credit for a statistics class she took at her Russian University.  In speaking with a counsler at her current university, he advised her to get her Russian professor to send a detailed explanation of the course and she would get the additional credit.  We just received it yesterday and still have to get it interpretated.  I'll let you guys know how it finishes up.

KenC