6 Best Ways to Avoid Delays with Credential Evaluation

07/03/2025

(Delayed credential evaluation can be frustrating)

You decided to go with a “famous” foreign credential evaluation, and you’re trying to call but no one answers the phone, or you’re in the line to submit your evaluation application but the customer service clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

You know your time is being wasted and delayed.

Now, you’re frustrated and angry because you want to avoid delays with your foreign credential evaluation for job applications, immigration, and even school applications.

The sceneries above sound familiar? Because that’s probably you have been through!

Don’t worry, we hear you! Today, we’ll cover 6 ways to avoid delays with foreign credential evaluation to save your time.

1. Know what foreign credential evaluation is

Foreign Credential Evaluation, Academic Equivalency Evaluation on Wikipedia, is an analytical report which determines the equivalency in the US education system of a potential US immigrant's foreign academic and professional credentials.

Report of education evaluation includes the level of education and number of years completed, as well as the field of specialization.

However, you might still be confused about the difference between a translation and a credential evaluation?

Read 9 FAQs - Translation and Evaluation of Foreign Diploma for more information.

2. Choose the correct evaluation type

In general, there are two commonly used types of educational evaluations:

• Foreign Degree Evaluation (Diploma Evaluation/Document by Document)
  This report includes U.S. degree equivalency only. It's a basic evaluation that often satisfies requirements for employment and immigration.
• Transcript Evaluation (Course by Course)
  This most complete report includes U.S. degree equivalency, credits, grades, and GPA. It's recommended for college admission, determining transfer credits or applying for an advanced degree, licensing, USCIS RFE, and more.

3. Preview your required documents

Reach out to a foreign credential evaluation agency, confirm what they need, and make all the documents ready.

Most of the time, foreign credential evaluation agencies will require you to get these documents in hand:

• Degree Certificate
• Translated degree certificate by a certified translator
• Transcripts
• Translated transcripts by a certified translator (required if doing Transcript Evaluation)

Not being able to read through the required documents before submitting them for your foreign credential evaluation could mean you send the wrong materials, which in turn will bring unwanted delays of your report.

On top of that, credential evaluation agencies won’t start the service only when they receive everything they asked for. Therefore, to preview your required documents are extra important.

4. Start early for foreign credential evaluation

It’s never bad to start things early, including your process for foreign credential evaluation. Especially you are planning to use the report for job applications, immigration and school applications. All of them have deadlines.

Although credential evaluation agencies provide rush services, you may not want to waste more money just because you’re late for it.

Also, you’ll never know what is going to happen, so it’s always good to leave yourself some extra time for unexpected situations, for example, mail being delayed or your PDF document is in junk mail without knowing.

5. Go to a smaller agency that can serve your needs better

Now, although you have done all above to prevent delays, you might still face the situations we mentioned in the beginning. To be fair, it’s understandable because the big guys from NACES are busy, and sometimes they just don’t see you as that important.

With that said, go to smaller agencies, like American Education and Translation Services, can better your experience for the services.

We guarantee:

• Experienced credential evaluators. Our Evaluation Director has had over a decade experience and was a Senior Associate Director at a well-known agency.
• Reply your email in 30 mins. To save your valuable time, we respond you rapidly via email.
• Easy to be reached out. You can always contact us via phone, email, WhatsApp and more.
• Customer service that puts you in the first place. We understand your pain of being ignored if you go to bigger agencies.
• Reasonable pricing and quality service.

6. Submit your documents online

Other than being delayed by customer service, most big guys require you to mail original credential documents to them if you don’t live in the same city. This will bring another issue: mails being lost or delayed.

To save you time, you can simply take a picture or scan your documents and email them to a trusted foreign credential evaluation agency.

Think about it, enjoy fast responses online or waiting anxiously for your mail to arrive, which one would you prefer?

Conclusion

No one wants to delay their application process in employment, immigration and education, that’s why we covered 6 ways to avoid delays with foreign credential evaluation.

Keep in mind, if you feel being ignored or your services are delayed by the big credential evaluation companies, come to a smaller one can be a good alternative.

At American Education and Translation Services, our owner, Mr. Jeremy Yan, who is also the Director of Evaluation, worked for a prominent agency for 10+ years as a senior associate director.

He was just like you, coming to the US from a foreign country to better his life. And that’s why he wanted to help people like you by providing fast, cheap, affordable and reliable education credential evaluation services.

Contact us today for a Free Estimate!

Other related articles:

5 Ways to Avoid Delays with Credential Evaluation
How to Avoid a Delay in Credentials Evaluation with WES
Avoid Delays with Credential Evaluation

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Jeremy Yan, President & Director of Evaluation at AET

Immigrated to the U.S. back in 1998, Mr. Yan had worked for over 10 years in a prominent company as a senior associate director and team leader. He has completed hundreds of thousands of foreign credential evaluation of documents from numerous foreign countries for various universities, licensing boards, U.S. government, and immigration services. He is a leading expert at American Education and Translation Services and was invited several times to be a keynote speaker to hundreds of admission counselors of U.S. universities.