WES Advisor Blog

Trusted Advice for Academic and Professional Success

How to Upgrade Your WES Credential Evaluation Report

Thursday | January 10, 2019 | by Kelly Acheson

upgrade WES report

Did you know that you can upgrade your completed credential evaluation online through My Account?

You can think of an upgrade as an update. It means that you are purchasing a new service or adding a new educational credential to your equivalency report for the U.S. or Canada.

What Are Your Upgrade Options?

Here are your upgrade options:

  • Add a new credential or completed degree
  • Add new courses
  • Upgrade your Document-by-Document evaluation to a Course-by-Course evaluation
  • Upgrade to our International Credential Advantage Package (ICAP)
  • Upgrade your Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) to a Document-by-Document or Course-by-Course evaluation

If you choose one of these upgrade options, you will receive a new reference number specific to your upgrade order. This is because each upgrade is treated as a new credential evaluation.

Although we will transfer the documents from your previous evaluation to your upgrade, we may not be able to use your previously submitted documents if our document requirements have changed. Our evaluators will review your documents and will request additional documents as necessary.

See step-by-step instructions for upgrading your credential evaluation in this video:

Why Order an Upgrade?

There are many reasons why you may need an upgrade.

When you upgrade, you need to choose a reason for the upgrade, such as:

  • adding a new credential that you just received
  • adding additional courses
  • upgrading the report type

Here are some scenarios to help you understand when you may need to order an upgrade:

  • You want an older credential evaluated.
    • For example, you had your master’s credential evaluated a year ago, but now you are applying to a university that requires your bachelor’s degree to be evaluated, as well. In this case, you would need to request an upgrade in My Account, add your bachelor’s credential, and then send in the required documents. You would receive a new credential evaluation report with both your master’s and bachelor’s credentials.
  • You are having trouble obtaining the required documents for one of your credentials.
    • For example, you want to have your Bachelor of Science and MBA degrees evaluated. You have all the required documents for your Bachelor of Science, but you do not have all the documents for your MBA. If you do not want to delay the credential evaluation process by waiting for your MBA documents, you could order a credential evaluation of your bachelor’s degree. Then, once you have gathered all the required documents for your MBA credential, you could upgrade your report. Your upgraded report would contain both your bachelor of science and MBA credentials. Likewise, if you have already ordered a credential evaluation with multiple credentials, but are having trouble gathering the documents for one credential, you can contact us to drop a credential from your application. Keep in mind that we do not begin the evaluation process until we have received all needed documents for all your credentials. So, missing documents for one credential can hold up your entire credential evaluation.
  • You want to upgrade from a basic evaluation to a more detailed evaluation.
    • The document-by-document credential evaluation is our most basic report, which describes the earned credential. For example, if you ordered a document-by-document report, but now want a more comprehensive evaluation, you would need to upgrade to the course-by-course evaluation. This report includes all the information in a document-by-document report, as well as an analysis of each course on your transcript, and the U.S. or Canadian equivalent of your grades, credit hours, GPA, and course levels.

Can I Upgrade Any WES Credential Evaluation?

Yes, but a credential evaluation cannot be upgraded for a different country. In other words, you cannot upgrade a U.S. credential evaluation to a Canadian credential evaluation. Similarly, you cannot have a Canadian evaluation upgraded to a U.S. credential evaluation. In both of these instances, you would need to apply for a new credential evaluation report. However, if you provide our customer service team with your prior reference number, we can transfer to your new application the documents you previously sent in.

Helpful Tips

Whether you are ordering an upgrade or a new credential evaluation, do not send in your required documents until you have completed your online application and paid for your credential evaluation. We cannot begin to process your documents until your online application is complete and payment has been made in full.

If you are having trouble completing the WES application, ordering an upgrade, or understanding the document requirements for your country or territory of education, please refer to our Help Center. This helpful online resource has the answers to many frequently asked questions.

Find More WES Help:

Understanding WES Required Documents

Tips for Completing Your WES Application

Which Credentials Does WES Evaluate?

How to Renew Your ECA Report

Kelly Acheson

Kelly Acheson is the Digital Content Producer for World Education Services.