Transcript Evaluation

Foreign Transcripts

A transcript is deemed “Foreign” if the college is located outside the United States1. 

TES understands how costly it is to request a foreign credential evaluation. Please consider the following limitations of a foreign evaluation from TES, prior to investing in a Foreign Credential Evaluation Service: 

  • Most foreign coursework can only be applied as elective credit and is often ONLY APPLIED to the following associate degree general education areas: 
    • Social science 
    • Natural science 
    • Humanities 
    • Physical Education 
  • Foreign coursework CANNOT SATISFY: 
    • Speech/Communication, English, or Mathematics associate degree general education areas 
    • Major requirements 
    • Transfer requirements (Associate Degrees for Transfer, CSU GE, IGETC) 

After reviewing the information above and are certain a foreign transcript evaluation could benefit your program(s) of study, please follow these TWO steps: 

Step 1. Students with foreign coursework must request an evaluation from an approved Foreign Credential Evaluation Service listed on the National Association of Credential Evaluation Services membership list.   

  • The evaluation package or service MUST INCLUDE:  
    • An analysis, which indicates whether each course is lower-division or upper-division  
    • Semester unit conversion 
    • Letter grade conversion 
  • The three NACES companies are ones TES frequently receive foreign transcript evaluations from: 
      1. Applicants can create a WES account by visiting: https://applications.wes.org/createaccount/login/login 
      2. Select the course-by-course evaluation option to ensure that your evaluation meets our requirements for admission review. 
      3. To ensure that {University – School Name} receives an official copy of your evaluation, select it from the drop-down box and add it as a recipient. 
      4. If you provided a WES transcript reflecting in-progress study, a follow-up WES course-by-course evaluation showing the complete academic record and degree conferral could be required.  
      5. Applicants are responsible for paying all fees for such evaluations, upgrades, as well as making arrangements with WES to send and receive their documents. 

Step 2. Send your foreign transcript report to TES via: 

College of San Mateo  

Attn: Transcript Evaluation Services   

1700 W Hillsdale Blvd.  

San Mateo, CA 94402  

1CAVEAT: The rest of the information pertaining to “Foreign Transcripts” on this page assumes that the foreign institution does NOT possess U.S. regional accreditation. While rare, there are some foreign institutions which have obtained and maintained U.S. regional accreditation, which you can verify on one of the U.S. regional accreditation directories. 

If a particular foreign institution is U.S. regionally accredited, then we are able to evaluate it without requiring such transcript(s) to go through any of other requirements listed on this page (i.e., that students obtain a NACES-approved foreign transcript service’s course detail report) provided that the transcript submitted to SMCCCD is in English and is an official transcript and displays all of the required pieces of information such as units, grades, etc.