WES vs ECE, and How an Evaluation Works

They are both accepted. That is the first thing.

World Education Services and Educational Credential Evaluators are both members of NACES, the association whose membership US institutions generally treat as the mark of a legitimate evaluator, alongside around twenty others including IERF, SpanTran (now The Evaluation Company), Josef Silny and Transcript Research. Neither is the official one, because there is no official one. What exists is a list your university or licensing board publishes, and that list is the only authority worth arguing with.

So before comparing anything else: read the requirement. If it names WES, the comparison is over. If it says "any NACES member", you have a genuine choice. If it names nobody, ask whether you need an evaluation at all before you spend the money.

Which report do you need?

WES sells two, and ordering the wrong one is the most expensive mistake on this page because you pay again to fix it. From WES's own description:

Document-by-document identifies each credential you hold and states its US or Canadian equivalent. It says what your degree is. It is the cheaper report, and WES describes it as appropriate for immigration, for employment, and for entering a university as a first-year undergraduate.

Course-by-course does all of that and then analyses every course on your transcript, converting credits and grades into US terms. This is the report that carries a GPA. WES points to it for licensing boards and for graduate programmes. If your reason for reading this page is that you need a 4.0-scale number, the document-by-document report will not give you one, whatever else it does.

So: read the requirement, order the report it names, and if it names neither but demands a GPA, you need course-by-course.

How your documents actually reach WES

The part that surprises people is that you generally cannot supply your own academic records. WES sets required documents per country on its required documents page, and for most countries the transcript has to arrive from the issuing authority, sealed or sent electronically, not forwarded by you and in most cases not by your school either. Photocopies you hold, however official-looking, are not the thing being asked for.

The practical consequence is about time rather than money. You create the WES application first, which gives you a reference number, and that number has to travel with the documents so they can be matched to your file when they land. Then you wait on whoever issues your records, and that wait is usually the long pole - evaluators process reasonably quickly once a file is complete, while universities and examination boards work to their own calendars. Start before you think you need to.

One evaluation covers everything you are submitting. You are not buying a separate evaluation per certificate; you add each credential to the same application. The issuing bodies, however, will charge you their own fee per document they send, and that is a separate bill from WES's, which is where budgets usually go wrong.

If your qualifications are A-levels or IGCSEs

This case confuses almost everyone who meets it, because the institution WES wants is not the school you attended. British international qualifications are awarded by an examination board, so the board is the issuing authority and the board is what belongs in the institution field. Your school taught you; Cambridge or Pearson awarded and holds the record.

Cambridge International issues certifying statements of results and will courier them to a named recipient, so WES is given as that recipient. Pearson Edexcel issues a Certifying Statement of Results, printed on secure paper with a hologram, and Pearson notes that documents going to a third party are currently sent digitally. Either way it is the board sending, not you and not your school.

Two more things that trip people on this route. IGCSE, AS and A2 go on one application, added as separate credentials, rather than becoming three orders. And the board's fee is charged per document, so someone submitting all three levels pays the board three times while paying WES once. Whether you need all three depends on what the receiving institution asked for, and that is worth an email before you order anything, because the A2 results alone are sometimes all that is wanted.

As for the "years attended" field, it means the period you were enrolled at the institution whose record is being evaluated, not the date you sat an individual paper.

Why two honest evaluators disagree

An evaluator does not take your average and rescale it. It reads your transcript course by course and assigns each grade a US equivalent using its own research into how that country, and sometimes that specific institution, grades. Those tables are each company's own work and none of them are published as open data. Two companies researching the same country independently will draw the band lines in slightly different places, and once those small differences are applied across thirty or forty courses and weighted by credit, the final GPAs can separate meaningfully.

Applicants comparing reports find gaps in both directions, sometimes large ones. There is no rule that one is consistently kinder, and anyone who tells you otherwise is extrapolating from their own single transcript. We cannot predict which will be higher for you, and neither can anyone else, which is exactly why choosing an evaluator on hoped-for GPA is a bad way to spend a few hundred dollars.

Why your number was surprising

Almost every "my evaluated GPA makes no sense" post comes down to band mapping rather than scaling, and it cuts both ways.

Upwards. On India's 10-point systems, applicants regularly report an evaluated GPA well above what proportional arithmetic would give. That is the country table doing its job: if a mark sits in the band that country treats as excellent, it maps to a US A regardless of how the raw number reads to an American eye. The intuitive calculation - your CGPA out of ten, scaled to four - is not the calculation anyone is doing.

Downwards. In the Netherlands the 1 to 10 scale barely uses its top. An 8 is a strong mark, a 9 is close to unheard of, and a respectable average of around 7.4 can band-map course by course into something that reads as ordinary on a US transcript. The Dutch grades to GPA page shows that compression directly. France, Italy and Germany each compress differently, and the grading scales page puts them side by side.

Neither direction is anyone being unfair. Two systems are using the same digits to mean different things, and the evaluation is the translation.

The question that matters more than the GPA

For a great many applicants the GPA is not what decides the application. Degree equivalency is. An evaluation states whether your qualification is equivalent to a completed US bachelor's degree, and if it is not, a strong GPA does not rescue it.

The clearest case is India's three-year bachelor's degree. WES recognises selected three-year Indian degrees as equivalent to a US bachelor's where the degree was earned in Division I and the awarding institution holds NAAC accreditation at grade A or better; degrees that do not meet those conditions are reported as three years of undergraduate study instead. WES set this out in its own publication, World Education News and Reviews. Look up your institution's current NAAC grade before you order anything, because that single fact can matter more to your application than every grade on the transcript.

How to choose, practically

Check what is accepted, first and always. Then compare turnaround time against your deadlines, remembering that the slow part is usually your own university posting sealed transcripts rather than the evaluator's processing. Compare total cost including sending reports to each institution, and check whether the evaluation will be reusable - if licensing or immigration is anywhere in your future, an evaluator whose report is accepted by those bodies too saves you paying twice. Choose on those grounds, not on a number nobody can forecast.

And before you commit to anything, it is reasonable to want a rough sense of where you stand. That is what this site is for: the converter gives you a working equivalence with its method printed beside it, percentage to GPA shows every conversion method at once so you can see the spread, and the WES iGPA page is plain about what a free estimate is and is not. None of it is an evaluation, and this site will never pretend otherwise.

Questions this page gets asked

What is the difference between WES and ECE?

Both are members of NACES, the association of US credential evaluation services, and both issue course-by-course evaluations carrying a US GPA. They are separate companies applying their own methodologies and their own country research, so the same transcript can come back with different numbers. Institutions decide which evaluators they accept: some name WES specifically, many accept any NACES member, a few name none at all.

Why did WES and ECE give me different GPAs?

Because they are two different instruments, not two attempts at one answer. Each evaluator maintains its own research on how a country's grades map into US terms, and neither publishes those tables as open data. Applicants comparing notes report gaps in both directions on identical transcripts. There is no way to know in advance which will read your grades more generously, and any site claiming to predict it is guessing.

Which evaluator should I use?

The one your institution names. That instruction outranks every opinion, including this page's. If more than one is accepted, pick on turnaround time, cost and whether you will need the report again later for licensing or immigration - evaluators will reissue to extra recipients, so one report often serves several applications. Only pick on expected GPA if someone can show you their methodology, and they cannot.

Why is my evaluated GPA higher than my percentage suggests?

Because an evaluator does not scale your average, it re-grades each course. If your country's grading convention means a 60 percent is a genuinely strong mark, the country table can map that band to a US A or B, and a mark that looks mediocre to a US reader converts well. This is why applicants from India's 10-point systems are regularly surprised on the upside, and why the arithmetic they expected - average divided by ten, times four - never appears.

Why did my GPA drop after evaluation?

The same mechanism running the other way. In compressed European scales the top of the range is barely used: a Dutch 8 out of 10 is a strong mark and a 9 is close to unheard of, but band-mapped course by course the 7s can land as a B. A respectable average converts to something that looks ordinary on a US transcript. Nothing has been calculated wrongly - two systems mean different things by the same number.

Is a three-year bachelor's degree from India accepted?

It depends on the institution and your division, and this usually matters more than your GPA. WES recognises selected three-year Indian bachelor's degrees as equivalent to a US bachelor's where the degree was earned in Division I and the awarding institution holds NAAC accreditation at grade A or better; other three-year degrees are reported as three years of undergraduate study rather than a completed US-equivalent bachelor's. Check your institution's NAAC grade before you pay for anything.

Do I need document-by-document or course-by-course?

Course-by-course if you need a GPA, because it is the only one of the two that produces a 4.0-scale number: it analyses every course on your transcript and converts the credits and grades. Document-by-document simply states what each of your credentials is equivalent to. WES points to document-by-document for immigration, employment and first-year undergraduate entry, and to course-by-course for licensing boards and graduate programmes. Order the one your institution names, and order it once - correcting the choice later means paying again.

Can I send my own transcripts to WES?

Usually not. WES publishes required documents country by country, and for most countries academic records must come from the issuing authority directly, sealed or electronically, rather than being forwarded by you. Create the application first so you have a reference number, make sure that number travels with the documents, then allow for the issuing body being slower than the evaluator.

How do I submit A-levels and IGCSEs to WES?

Through the examination board, not your school, because the board is the awarding authority and holds the record. Cambridge International issues certifying statements and couriers them to a named recipient; Pearson Edexcel issues a Certifying Statement of Results and currently sends third-party copies digitally. Name the board as the institution rather than your high school.

Do I need a separate WES application for O-levels, AS and A2?

No. They go on one application as separate credentials, and WES charges you once for the evaluation. The examination board is the part that charges per document, so submitting three levels means paying the board three times while paying WES once. Check what the receiving institution actually asked for first, since the A2 results are sometimes all that is needed.

Can I get an evaluation re-done if I disagree with it?

Evaluators have review and appeal processes, and they are worth using if you can point to a specific factual error, such as a misread grade, a missing course or the wrong institution record. What they will not do is revisit a methodology decision because you hoped for a different number. Read the report against your transcript line by line the day it arrives, while the review window is open.

Other calculators

• Build your whole transcriptOne record, courses from any country at once, read in any system.→
• Convert between any two systemsTurn a grade from one country's scale into another's.→
• Every grading scale, side by sideWhat each country's scale is and what its grades mean.→