February 07, 2013 When evaluating academic documents from around the world, ensuring their authenticity and legitimacy is the most important step. An official academic document, e.g. transcript, certificate, diploma, degree, is one that has been received directly from the issuing/source institution. It must bear the institution’s seal, logo, date, and an appropriate signature. What makes […]
documents
Academic Documents: The Psychology of Fraud
February 2, 2012 In less than a week, two senior analysts in my company detected irregularities on documents we had received for evaluation and both were able to determine that the documents had been falsified. Though the due diligence exercised by our team of analysts in their scrupulous review and handling of these applications is […]
Gobbledygook: Cracking the Code
July 28, 2011 A monthly rant from the “Frustrated Evaluator” Definition: 1. Gobbledygook or gobbledegook (sometimes gobbledegoo) is any text containing jargon or especially convoluted English that results in it being excessively hard to understand or even incomprehensible. I’m an easy going guy and 90% of the time evaluating international academic documents, something I’ve been doing for nearly 20 years, is […]
Forensics of Academic Documents: Part I
One question that never fails to be asked when I present a workshop on foreign credential evaluations or even in casual conversation with someone asking me about what I do for a living is “do you see any forged documents?’” And I always reply “yes.” Foreign credential evaluation is part research and the determination of […]