Credential assessment: choosing your agency with the site’s free tool

Your Cameroonian degree means nothing to IRCC. Until a recognised agency has written down what it corresponds to in Canada, your years of study are worth no points, and your profile starts out short. That document is called an educational credential assessment, and the first decision to make is which agency to use.

The tab called Credential assessment puts the question plainly: /en/check-list.html#equivalence

Eight agencies, two families

IRCC accepts only eight. Five work on every kind of degree: WES, ICAS, CES, IQAS and ICES. The other three are reserved for one profession: the Medical Council of Canada for physicians, the Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada for pharmacists, and the Canadian Architectural Certification Board for architects.

The table on the page gives, for each one, who it is for and what you should know. From Cameroon, WES is the most used: it works in French, it accepts documents sent by Cameroonian universities, and its report goes straight to IRCC electronically. ICAS and IQAS are flagged for nurses. CES issues a paper report, often slower. ICES is a provincial body, recognised across Canada.

The rule almost everyone gets backwards

For a physician, the Medical Council of Canada is mandatory, licence or no licence.

For a pharmacist or an architect it is different, and that is where people go wrong: the professional body is required only if the occupation you declare needs a licence to practise. An architect employed as a project manager, a pharmacist in a post that requires no licence: a general agency from the list is enough. It is the licence that decides, not the degree.

The table also flags a useful date: the Canadian Architectural Certification Board was added by IRCC on 20 May 2024, and an assessment obtained elsewhere before 31 October 2024 remains valid.

What the page shows next

The whole route, in four steps, with the trap hidden in each one.

You open a file with the agency and receive a reference number. Write your name exactly as it appears on your passport: one letter out, and IRCC asks for explanations.

You then ask your university to send the degree and the transcripts for every year. The crucial point: the university sends them, in a sealed and stamped envelope, directly to the agency. A file you send yourself is rejected. It is the most common mistake, and it costs weeks.

The agency then writes to your institution to confirm the degree is genuine. That is the long step, and it depends neither on you nor on the agency. Chase your university: plenty of files simply sleep because nobody over there has opened the envelope.

Finally you receive the report. It states what your degree corresponds to in Canada. Check that level before creating your profile: that is what you must declare, not the name of your Cameroonian diploma.

The page also gives the order of magnitude of the cost — around 250 to 300 Canadian dollars depending on the agency and the type of report, plus shipping from Cameroon — while sending you to the agency’s own site for today’s price, because it changes.

Two things to take away

The assessment is valid for five years, and it is the slowest document to obtain because it does not depend on you. Start with it, not at the end.

And a second degree is not always worth paying for. The two-or-more-credentials tier requires two post-secondary credentials, one of them at least three years long. If that is not your case, paying for a second assessment will earn you nothing. The page says so, and the site’s eligibility test confirms it against your own figures.

For the processing times and prices seen from Cameroon, the detailed article is here: /en/article/equivalence-diplomes-wes-cameroun-delais-prix

And the table of agencies, with its sharing buttons, stays at /en/check-list.html#equivalence