The new policy announced byWorld Education Service (WES) on December 1, 2018 has created a lot of chaos among all the Indian abroad aspirants. According to the new policy, all the documents for the applicants in India have to be mailed directly to the WES by the institution that issues them .i.e. The institution have to mail your attested documents directly to WES in a sealed envelope with institution stamps/seals on the back flap. The institution must mail the sealed envelope themselves. They should not give the sealed envelope to the students or a third party to mail to WES. You can know specifications about the policy on official WES website.
Why did WES introduce the new policy?
Due to this increased incidence of fraudulent documents, WES has decided to only accept documents in sealed envelopes that are mailed directly by the institutions themselves in order to maintain its legitimacy.
Well, it is fair enough on their part but they seem to forget one minute but very important detail while introducing this policy i.e. implementation - How will the students and their institutes implement the new policy? Till now, Indian institutions have no service or any way to send the documents to the WES directly. So how will the students send their documents to WES? - A question all the abroad aspirants are trying to figure out.
Running to the institutions, requesting them to help to send the documents, but end up receiving no help - all seems like a vicious cycle in which students are trapped in. Now what to do? Well we cannot blame the institutions for not providing the courier service. And starting something like a courier service just for mailing the documents to WES might take time as it may need updating existing and implementation of new systems. However, the institutions soon might want to consider offering services like these to the students along with the sealed documents cause of the new policy. Irrespective of the possible future systems, the students who are presently applying to the universities abroad and need a WES authorization are stuck in their application process. Neither they are unable to use third party courier service due to the fear of rejection nor are the institutions proving to be of much support. This might end up affecting the future of all the study abroad aspirants badly.
How to send documents to WES?
According to new rules, WES doesn't accept documents sent by the student directly. Instead it is mentioned that the student's University should mail WES directly with a sealed envelope containing all documents.
You can make out the seriousness and adverse effects the new policy has by some of the distressed student testimonies.
"The problem is that my Undergraduate university doesn't do that. Did anyone else face this problem?”
“I was trying to post to WES but they require the transcripts to be sent by the university only (a new rule implemented since 1st December, 2018 for Indian students). The college is unaware of any process to do the same but has given us the sealed envelope. I just wanted to post on college's behalf without displaying my from address but the college's from address to be displayed on the DHL Packet. How could I do this?”
“I need to change the from address from my personal address to the institution's address, how can I do so?”
“My university never sends the documents directly. That's the problem. What should I do now?”
“Because of the increasing fraud cases WES have taken this illogical measure but we ending up facing the consequences and unable to proceed.”
“I have already sent my documents to WES via third party courier service but they rejected my documents.”
Yocket experience after the new policy - A student placed an order to send the transcripts to WES from Yocket Send Transcripts service. The student found a hack and chose the wrong way to send the documents. Instead of using the real user name the student used the username - The Principal and placed a pickup from the institute address. So the shipment label created was from ‘The Principal’ with that student’s institute address. However, we have prevented the student from doing so. With no exact solution from WES or their institutes, the Indian applicants are forced to send their documents with such wrong paths at their own risks. This was just one example out of many where students.
Approximately 5 lakh Indian students go to study abroad every year. How is WES going to take the responsibility if the policy is not executed properly by the Indian institutions. What if the students are deprived of the opportunity of application even after having a strong profile. With high chances of missing out on their dream university, many students are finding hacks and getting influenced to send their documents via false ways to the WES. So is this what WES wanted? More and more people who might just want to apply to the universities but end up following the wrong methods? This is an example of how good policies with an expectation of good results can go wrong if not implemented appropriately.
