If you’re planning to teach overseas, or if you’ve ventured out to international job markets, you may have realized that some countries have extra requirements for document authentication. China, Qatar, and Kuwait—just to name a few.
Let’s say you need your education documents (originating in the US) legalized for use in Qatar.
Qatar Diploma / Degree Attestation
The new requirements set by the Qatar Embassy/Consulate require the following documents to be processed together as a set:
1. Original Diploma (Notarized)
2. Original Transcript (Notarized)
3. Original Verification Letter (Notarized) — verification letter must be signed with a live signature and stamped by the registrar’s office and contain the following information
- Certificate information is accurate
- Enrollment and attendance (full-time, part-time, distance)
- Study and tests locations
- Degree obtained by the student (Diploma, Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate)
- Duration of the program
- The actual time the student spent to get a certificate (study start date – study end date)
- Public or private academic institution
- *In cases where the student attended more than two institutions, this must be specified in this letter. The letter must mention that the diploma took place on campus, face to face, not online, in case students took some portion online, specify how many classes out of how many on campus-in person.
The three documents specified above will need to be bundled together as one set. The three documents will receive one seal/stamp from the US Department of State, and then will be legalized by the embassy/consulates.
The Qatar consulate will only legalize ORIGINAL documents—photocopies/scanned copies are no longer accepted. You may re-order a diploma with your university for this document legalization process.
These are the necessary steps that need be completed by the Secretary of State, U.S. Department of State, and the relevant embassy—Qatar’s consulate, in this case.
Before you send these documents in to WCS, each document must be notarized locally by a notary public where the document was issued. Then, the bundle (all the documents together) must be certified by the local secretary of state. Only after these critical steps are completed, should you send in your document bundle to WCS.
Once you’ve sent in the documents to WCS, we’ll send you our Education Records Consent and Release Form — you must return this document to us signed and completed.
From there, WCS will handle the document legalization process. WCS will take the bundle to the US Department of State and finally to the Qatar embassy/consulate.
Better yet, handle this process step-by-step with our app, WCS Express. We’re here to answer any questions you may have throughout this process!
