What Is a Course-by-Course Evaluation? When You Need One and What It Contains

A course-by-course evaluation is the more detailed of the two standard credential evaluation reports. Alongside the overall U.S. equivalency of your qualification, it breaks your studies down subject by subject — and for admissions offices and licensing boards, that detail is usually the whole point.

What the report contains

• The U.S. equivalency of your qualification as a whole
• Every course or subject you completed, listed individually
• The U.S. semester credit hour value assigned to each course
• The U.S. letter grade equivalent for each course
• A calculated grade point average on the 4.0 scale
• Details of the institution and its recognition status in its home country

When you need one

Choose a course-by-course evaluation when the reviewer needs to see individual subjects:

• University admission — undergraduate or graduate, where GPA and prerequisites are assessed
• Transfer credit — where an institution decides which of your courses count toward a U.S. programme
• Professional licensing — nursing, engineering, teaching, accountancy and similar boards that check specific coursework against their own requirements

When you do not

For most immigration petitions — H-1B, EB-2, EB-3 — a document-by-document evaluation stating the overall equivalency is sufficient. The subject-level detail adds cost without adding anything the reviewer needs. If a provider steers you toward the more expensive report without asking what it is for, that is worth noting.

What it costs and how long it takes

Course-by-course reports typically cost more than document-by-document reports because the analysis is substantially longer — each subject must be individually assessed and converted. Market pricing generally falls between roughly $150 and $400, with turnaround commonly five to ten business days from receipt of complete documents. Rush options are usually available at a premium.

What you need to supply

Complete transcripts or mark sheets for every year of study, your degree certificate, and certified English translations of anything not already in English. Partial transcripts are the most common cause of delay: a course-by-course report cannot be produced from a summary or a final-year record alone.

Before you order

Ask the institution that requested the evaluation which report type they require, and get the answer in writing. It is the single step that prevents the most common and most avoidable expense in this process — paying twice because the first report was the wrong kind.