You may need to undergo the Educational Credential Assessment (ECA) process for both permanent residency program and higher education in Canada. Please be careful if you are applying for the ECA for higher study / academic purposes. The ECA for Immigration purposes and academic process is completely different. One does not fit for another.

For any Canadian Immigration program whether it’s a federal program (EE / CEC/ FSW) or any of the PNPs, they assign the points by your highest academic degree only. That means if you have Phd / Master’s / Bachelor’s / Diploma, you are not obligated to do the ECA for all the academic degrees you obtained, just the highest one is good to proceed with the ECA evaluation. 

There might be some special circumstances involved for someone. I will try to explain from my professional experience, please feel free to accept / deny the suggestions at your own accountability.

è Someone may have done a one-year master’s and that educational institution may not be of the high standard one. If so, then there is a probability that the individual may not get the equivalency of master’s by the ECA provider and they may even decline your application or say your organization is enlisted to be proceeded with. But if you include both master’s and bachelor’s degrees, there is a good possibility that you will get the Bachelors equivalency for your Masters / bachelor’s degrees. Means, instead of getting nothing, you are getting something at least to proceed with.

Which ECA provider should you go with?

You can get your ECA from any of the designated organizations.  As IRCC did not discriminate / categorize among the providers, I do not dare to do that. However, again according to my professional experience, WES is the best to deal with in terms of fees, time and dealing with their customer support.

For all others it will be either more money and/or time than you will be expecting. Now, do I recommend WES to my clients always? No.

The downside of WES is if your educational institution is not a top graded one, there is a high probability that you will not receive the same equivalency of your academic degree. Means, you may receive equivalency of bachelor’s degree for your master’s degree, you may receive equivalency of 03 years bachelor’s degree for your 04 years bachelor’s degree.

Do I tell you that other ECA providers except WES give you the same equivalency? No. But there is a good possibility that you may avail yourself of the same. Therefore, you should choose the ECA provider wisely. Finally, there were sometimes when I have seen my clients trying the WES first and then if they have not received the same equivalency then they tried with others.    

If you are a physician / pharmacist, then you surely want to go for your Designated professional bodies. MCC for the physicians and PEBC for the pharmacists.

To check all the designated ECA providers, please chick this link.

Disclaimer: The above writing is not intended to be a source of legal advice. Please seek legal advice and use your own good judgement before choosing to act on any information provided above. If you choose to rely on this article, you do so entirely at your own accountability.

If you find any information is untrue or misleading or you think you deserve the credit of the write-up, please reach out to me at: [email protected] and I will adjust as per your request when you are right.