Come the admission season and the staff and your university is overwhelmed with the number of applications for different courses and programs. Universities in the United States hold high prestige among students across the globe and every year hundreds of thousands of students apply for different courses here. The number of applicants keeps going up every year. It is quite a carnival like atmosphere as students from every corner of the world with distinct backgrounds come to be part of some of the most admired Universities and institutions in the world.
One of the biggest challenges in screening applications is thorough and fair evaluation of the credentials. What makes this process complex is that different countries where your students are coming from have different academic systems, grading methodologies and of course the language barrier. It goes without saying that this can be one of the most testing times for the team tasked with evaluating applications in your University. There are two choices you have here – carry out the credential evaluation in-house or hire the services of a third-party professional agency.
There are many Universities that believe in dealing with the evaluations in-house and this belief is based on the presumption that this offers them complete control over credential evaluations starting from the initial screening of the students to the final stages of the process. On the face of it this sounds great as your University would be able to maintain consistency in the evaluation process and selections adhering to the policies of the University. But there are several downsides in this process and biggest among this is the hiring and training of resources that would be tasked with carrying out these evaluations. This often shifts your focus from more critical academic tasks in the university.
Thankfully there are third-party agencies recognized by the United States Department of Education that offer these evaluation services. Outsourcing this to third-party professional agencies offers you many incentives without diluting the selection process. Here we shall look at how outsourcing credential evaluations would benefit your university.
Access to Expertise
Very few Universities can claim to have people with specialized roles of credential evaluations. Often this is a seasonal activity for your staff. Hence, your staff can’t claim to have expert knowledge in these evaluations. At most they would be evaluating the credentials based on certain standard practices. They lack knowledge about the latest tools used for the verification of credentials or knowledge about country-specific evaluation platforms. When you are hiring a specialized team for this process you immediately have access to their expertise. These agencies offer these services 365 days a year and make use of the latest tools and protocols to carry out the evaluation. This ensures your University’s selection process remains fair to the applicants and you also prevent those with dubious academic credentials from exploiting your admission process.
Knowledge Level Evaluations
It goes without saying that academic programs vary from one country to another and treating every school, high school or under-graduate program using the same benchmarks is impossible and can be dangerous. This is where these agencies come in with their knowledge level evaluations and this assists your team in decision making. They grade the knowledge and academic degree of the students with respect to US equivalence. They also covert the Grades of different countries into US equivalent grades which makes the selection process easier and fair for the students.
Outsourcing Saves Time
As you’d already knowcredential evaluation is a time consuming process. When your University has to be fair to all the foreign students applying for the different courses or programs, all the documents including degree and work experience certificates have to be meticulously evaluated and verified. This without doubt is a time taking process and your staff would need to repeat the same for every individual application. By using credential evaluation services of a company that is approved by the United States Department of Education your staff would be able to reduce the excess burden on them during the process of screeningcandidates. This time can be better used in other important matters during the admission process to ensure the most deserving candidates find their way into the university.
Outsourcing Credential Evaluation is Cost Effective
Another factor that you must keep in mind is the cost of credential evaluation as this is an expensive process along with being a time consuming one. The more applications that your university receives, more is the amount of time that you will have to put in to verify the credentials of all the candidates. In many cases institutions have to hire people for carry out this evaluation or train their own staff in this regard. Naturally this step involves lot of monetary outgo and this can easily be avoided by outsourcing this task to an agency. Also the monetary savings can be used in other important areas of the University.
Safeguarding Your Reputation
The urge and the desperation among foreign students to study in the United States often leads them to agents around the world who help them procure dubious degree and work experience certificates. These students entering your institution not only affects the academics but can also put its reputation at risk. Over the last many years several such cases have come to light where undeserving students have made it to the most prestigious Universities in the country and have also denied those to the deserving ones. Agencies involved in evaluations follow the most stringent process that allows them to spot the smallest of discrepancies in the certificates and other documents provided by the students. By working with them your University would be able to prevent fraud and also safeguard its reputation.
To conclude, you can clearly see the benefits of outsourcing credential evaluations to a third-party agency. It not only saves time but also offers you access to expertise. Your University would be able to streamline the process of admission for foreign students by hiring the services of an agency that is recognized by the United States Department of Education.
Summary: In this write-up we look at how your University can benefit by hiring the services of a professional third-party agency for credential evaluations.
