Juan Jimenez
6600 Kennedy Boulevard East, apt. 12F
West New York, New Jersey 07093

I am also interested in purchaching 2 copies of the Volume 2 New Country Index when it comes out.

As a private credentials evaluator, I would actually recommend doing things in a slightly different manner. For the two Honours courses/main subjects (generally listed as numbers 1 and 2), there are several schools of thought. Some evaluations agencies recommend giving double the credit for the major subjects than for the minor subjects (so 8 and 4 credits each), much like with the British Advanced and Advanced Subsidiary levels. I have seen other evaluation agencies that grant 9 and 6 credits, respectively, to award exactly 30 credits. Personally, we give 8 credits for the Honours courses and 6 for the minor courses because that’s more in line with the number of credits annually awarded for subjects taken at a US higher education institution while still acknowledging that the major/Honours courses are more in-depth and intensive.

While the Austrian Maturity Certificate can be 13 years, it is more commonly 12 years (except for certain programs that emphasize additional subjects like music or sports), and, by convention, would not be awarded transfer credits. It is a rigorous program of study and examination, and a case could certainly be made to compare it to the German Abitur (especially given that most German states are or have moved to a 12-year system which will definitely mean that those of us giving credit for the 13th year need to examine our policies). There hasn’t been a lot published (in the U.S.) about Austrian education in the last 20 years specific to the field of international education, but that which is available all concurs that the Austrian Maturity Certificate is comparable to completion of secondary school education.

Are you going to be attending NAGAP in SF this week? If so, do you have some time to meet.
Best wishes,
John

The easiest route would be to outsource your credentials to a private evaluation agency. If you’re getting only a handful, and they’re not coming from the same region, it might behoove you to go this route, even though this will incur an additional financial expense at the outset, either to your institution or to the student’s family (though many private evaluation companies do offer discounted pricing to institutions, or so I understand). If your (or your institution’s) goal is to merely ensure that your incoming international students are placed appropriately, this is the most straight-forward, least stressful, and fastest path to that goal. If you decide to go this route, there’s an article on how to choose a private evaluation company under Miscellaneous.

However, if your (or your institution’s) goal is to better understand the transcripts/grading scales/educational systems/educational ideologies of your incoming international students, that’s an entirely different manner. It’s a lot easier if your incoming students are coming from the same region, if not the same country, because there are a lot of similarities to be found in educational systems of countries that were colonized by the same rulers when their formal educational systems were put in place. While my free training on credentials evaluation is based around post-secondary documents, much of the information (especially in Credentials Evaluation Training) holds true, especially with respect to the main types of educational systems, and is a good starting point for getting into the swing of things. If you decide to do your own in-house evaluations, you can go a couple of different routes. The least expensive route would probably be to start building your own library. Doug McBean of the University of Toronto wrote a good article on starting to build a reference library in the December 2006 edition of the NAFSA wRAP-Up http://www.nafsa.org/resourcelibrary/Default.aspx?id=8911

AACRAO sells a series of over a dozen publications called the Handbook for the Admission of International Students to Elementary and Secondary Schools in the United States – http://www.aacrao.org/publications/catalog/handbook.cfm. Obviously, Canada is different than the US, but it’s one of the few series of publications that deal specifically with students who have yet to complete secondary school. AACRAO actually has a large number of country-specific (and sometimes region-specific) international education publications that cover the entire educational system of a country (or region) – http://www.aacrao.org/publications/catalog/international.cfm. NAFSA, too, has a pretty impressive collection of publications for sale as well as the in-progress, free, online Online Guide to Educational Systems around the World. http://www.nafsa.org/publication.sec/epublications/online_guide_to/

Like AACRAO EDGE (http://www.aacrao.org/international/) – a paid and very extensive database of international equivalents, grading scales, and more – the NAFSA Guide isn’t consistent about whether they include credentials prior to secondary completion. Other great publications come from ECE, IERF, and smaller groups. The document Researching International Education Systems and Institutions has a very extensive list of country-by-country (and regional) publications (both paid and free) if you decide to build a library.

In addition, many of the private evaluation companies (AACRAO, ECE, IERF, WES, etc.) offer on-demand training programs that are tailored to your specific needs. This may be the fastest way to get up and running if your institution decides that it wants or needs to expand its understanding of its growing international student population. Training programs are also offered at NAFSA conferences (and the regional conferences are happening all around the US this month and next, so you may be able to find one that’s not prohibitively distant), though most of those deal with secondary school graduates.

I hope these are good starting points.

I just wanted to inform you that the ECE Conference Handout site’s url changes from time-to-time. As part of ECE’s Green Initiative to conserve on paper, we offer online copies of our conference presentation handouts to those who have attended the session or workshop. The specific url is given to those in attendance and the presentations are only on our website for approximately 30 days or so.

ECE’s presentations can be very practical in nature, and therefore, just having a handout without attending the actual presentation may not be beneficial, and in fact, the attendee may not grasp the whole concept taught.

Just wanted you and your readers to know this, and encourage all of you to attend our session and workshop presentations whenever possible. These presentations are part of our public service mission as a non-profit organization seeking to help individuals who have been educated outside of the U.S.

Again, I cannot stress enough how valuable and helpful your website is, Peggy.

Thank you! Marybeth Gruenewald, Director of Evaluation Staff Development