Sometimes, throughout our travels, a specific place can pull at you so intensely that you feel compelled to hold still and remain in this place for a significant amount of time. Most of the time these places take us off guard and we surprise ourselves. You’ll never truly be able to predict which cities, countries, or areas of the globe will most strongly capture your heart or your intrigue.

When settling in a foreign city for a significant length of time, one common thing travelers do is to enroll in the local college or university. It’s a good way to make friends, to learn the local language, and perhaps knock off a few credits or finally seize your intellectual passions.

However, sometimes the price of these institutions comes not in steep tuition payments, but in accreditation conversion once (if) we settle back into our country of origin. That’s where wes.org comes in. If you’re wondering how your foreign degree will hold up once you return to the States, or if the credits you earned while abroad can work toward additional study, World Education Services offers an International Credential Evaluation on hundreds of institutes of higher education around the world. You need not have completed a degree to use WES services; individual courses can be converted too.

WES offers a document-by-document evaluation for employment purposes, or a course-by-course evaluation for university comparison. The service is a tad pricy, ranging from US$100-160, and takes up to 7 business days. However, if you submit an online Evaluation Preview, and follow up with an official WES report within 7 days, the fee is reduced by US$20.