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How Can Legalisation For Qatar Go Wrong?
In this first part in our Legalisation Fixers series, we are looking at the most common issue we receive queries about. As Qatar require supporting documentation to legalise education certificates, this can cause confusion and delays. This is due to the very specific guidelines which these documents must meet in order to be stamped at the Qatari Embassy. Here is a recent case study of one such order we processed, where the customer had attempted to process the documentation themselves only to have the letter rejected.
In this article
Qatar Education Letter
Claire S. was going to work at a school in Qatar. For her position she required her degree certificate with supporting documents, PGCE and a Police Clearance certificate legalising for her visa. She had been advised by the school that she required a letter from her university verifying her degree and transcripts. She had requested a verification letter from her university from their online Student Services portal. The university sent her their standard verification letter and Claire then sent all 5 documents to the FCO for the Apostille.
Once they had been returned from the FCO with their Apostille, she then sent them to the Qatar Embassy in London for the Embassy stamp. However the degree and supporting documents were all rejected and returned almost 3 weeks later as the University letter did not meet their requirements. Claire then got in touch with us to ask our advice on why it wasn’t accepted, as she was now pressed for time to have these completed. As she wasn’t sure why it had been rejected from the standard guidance form she had received from the Embassy, Claire wasn’t willing to lose more time or fees having the letter returned incomplete again.
A police certificate for Qatar should also be recently issued, so it was important to have all of the required documents successfully processed as soon as possible.
The FCO will not check a document’s contents based on your personal requirements. They will apply an Apostille to any documents which meets their own guidelines and therefore this is not a guarantee that your destination country will apply their stamp at the Embassy.
How did Vital Consular help?
We checked the customer’s letter and confirmed that the standard letter which was issued to her had omitted several important points required for Qatar. We sent the Qatar checklist and a template letter for Claire to complete and send to the University to request a new copy. Unfortunately, the old letter was void and therefore the cost of the Apostille applied to this document was lost.
We checked over the newly issued letter, confirmed it would pass the guidelines and had a new Apostille applied, as well as the Embassy stamp to the other rejected documents. As the customer was pressed for time, we did this in-person on our Urgent service through our London office. All of the documents were stamped without issue and had them sent by courier directly to Claire’s employer in Doha.
What should the letter look like?
This is an example of a letter from York University which we feel is an excellent standard for all verification letters. All of the information required is listed and presented in a clear manner. It’s not necessary however to have the information formatted as it is in our example, as long as all points are covered explicitly, it will be accepted.
Although this was issued as standard, most universities do not include this much information. The wording of the letter is also extremely important, as certain phrases must be included to guarantee acceptance at the Embassy. The checklist for the letter is as follows:
- Award given and final result
- The mode of study: whether full-time or part-time
- The type of study: whether distance learning (E-Learning) or Face to Face learning (on campus learning)
- Location of study
- Location of examinations
- Length of study
- The actual dates of study (start date and the end date)
Download Our FREE Qatar Degree Legalisation Guide
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If you have a letter and you’re not sure it’s correct, or you haven’t yet requested it and you’d like to have some help with what you need to ask for, just get in touch. Even if you’ve had your letter rejected such as the customer in our case study, we can ensure it will be accepted both at the Qatar Embassy in London and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Doha when you arrive.
Give us a call today, you can get in touch directly on +44 (0) 330 088 1142, request a personalised quote here, send us a message via WhatsApp, use our live chat system, or e-mail us at sales@vitalconsular.com. Our friendly team of specialists are on hand to answer all of your queries.
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Ashraf Vachhiat
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