Is an apostille needed for a degree evaluation?

Key answer

No apostille is needed for an evaluation: such requirements are long gone, evaluators work with copies, some with electronic ones, and members who dealt with US agencies never met an apostille requirement anywhere. A foreign degree cannot be used directly in the US; what you need is the evaluation, done from a plain translation. For WES the tip is to first ask your university which evaluator it already works with: many universities have a WES arrangement and the sending problem solves itself; otherwise follow the WES instructions. Do not send originals, and WES correspondence can be slow - one member spent six weeks explaining that two similar-looking forms were two different diplomas.

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Community answers

The answers below are translated from the original Russian - the language of the community chats.

You are mixing things up. Those requirements were long ago. Now only copies are needed; apostilles are not required. WES, for example, needs an envelope from the university. There are other companies that work with electronic copies.
I have knocked on so many doors in U.S. government structures and read so much information in local chats that I can confidently say: no one in the U.S. requires an apostille. Well, almost no one; I don't know of any places where it is required.
A diploma from another country cannot be practically applied in the U.S. An evaluation is needed if, for example, you are going to study further and want to transfer credits or if an employer requires a diploma. For this, you send your diploma from a state university with a simple translation to a special organization in the U.S. that verifies it. An apostille is not required for this: this form of legalization only applies when countries mutually recognize it.
First, find out from your university which company they work with. Maybe they already have a connection with WES or another company. I also didn't think my university was already working with them; I pondered for a long time on how to send the documents. It turned out my university cooperates with WES. If not, proceed as WES outlines.
No one has ever told you to send originals; you've been persuaded for two days not to risk losing your diploma. And this is WES in all its glory: add to that a month and a half of communication, where I proved that two externally similar forms from two different diplomas are still different diplomas, not two copies of one. Their response speed at that time was almost a week.

The answers are anonymized community experience from the public chats, not legal advice. Officers may decide similar cases differently.

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Is an apostille needed for a degree evaluation?

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