Senescyt Diploma Process (College Diploma) (Professional Visa)

The SENESCYT (National Secretary Of Superior Education, Science, Technology and Innovation) is the institution in charge of reviewing International obtained Diplomas from Foreign Universities and approving or rejecting them for use in Ecuador.

The process of registration of Diplomas for Foreign professionals is extremely important especially if planning on using them to work and living in Ecuador in an specific field of studies, and is a great choice too to opt for a Professional Visa. The best part is that this same process is helpful either for the Temporary Professional Visa (2 years visa) and for a Permanent Professional Visa.

There is a series of steps to do before of the registration in the SENESCYT and they start in the country in which the Diploma was issued. The First and foremost step, is obtaining the documents from the University. For careers that are not related to the medical field these are the documents needed:

Diploma of the career being registered
Transcripts of the career being registered.
A letter that states that the person studied the full length of the career inside a classroom. (This letter is not mandatory, but can it be useful to have it if SENESCYT, during the reviewal of the case, decides that it is needed).

All these documents will need to be notarized, some Universities have a campus notary that does that directly. If it does not have it, each state has its own process to duly notarize a document. After having it notarized it is necessary to confirm if the country where the university is located is part or not of the Hague Convention:

If it is part of the Hague Convention: Have the document apostilled according to the countries rule.
If it is not part of the Hague Convention: The document will need to go through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Country to be legalized. And later, will need to be legalized by the Ecuadorian Consulate con jurisdiction in said country.

If the documents come written in English a translation will not be necessary. Is important to make copies of the documents in size A4 format if the original documents are larger than that.

The process of registration takes up to 45 business days.