UI and OAU Proof of English Proficiency (Certificate of Medium of Instruction) Processed in Three Days [TAGS: UI, OAU, NAIRALAND, PROOF OF ENGLISH, MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION]

UI and OAU Proof of English Proficiency (Certificate of Medium of Instruction) Processed in Three Days

Here is the funny thing about needing a Proof of English Proficiency (POEP) also known as Certificate of Medium of Instruction (CMOI), you often find yourself needing it in a matter of days; it’s only on rare cases you have the opportunity to wait before really needing it. The reasons for this is because when a travel aspirant—especially the first timers who don’t know much about getting the needed documents ready—hears about applying for admission as international student and they want to jump on it, this is when they learn they need a POEP/CMOI, then they start running around to see who can help them process it and get it delivered in a matter of days so they can meet up with the deadline on admission they are applying for. But unfortunately, when it comes to OAU and UI, as much as I know, processing these documents without manipulating the system somehow can take several weeks if not months to get delivered. These schools claim they deliver in one week if you apply for it on their website and as cheap as #1,000-#1,500 for UI and #5,000 for OAU, but if you fall for this it means you are yet to know your school despite your years of studying there.

I can’t speak for other agents on how much they collect to process a POEP/CMOI but I can speak for Pathfinders Edu Consultancy that these documents are processed for #13,500 for undergraduate POEP and #18,500 for postgraduate POEP and the document will be ready between 7 and 14 working days (this is our regular processing). But in the case of people who need it in a matter of 2 to 3 days, yes we can get this done too, but this would mean we are inviting more people to work on your document and we are spending more money on it than usual, hence your own charge would be #18,500 for undergraduate POEP and #23,500 for postgraduate POEP, and this document will be ready in 2 or 3 days. We call this the “Ultrafast” processing. So if this is what you want, when you talk to us about processing your Proof of English for you, just mention that you want the Ultrafast processing and your POEP would get delivered to you as produced by your school and as soon as 3 days latest. The idea is, money can save or buy you time if you are willing to pay the price.

Consequences of Non-genuine Recommendation Letter

 Consequences of Non-genuine Recommendation Letter

Maybe it is their travel agents ill-advising them or they do this on their own terms, but seeing that some travel aspirants go ahead forging some academic documents makes me feel like they think the people requesting for such document don’t think some people may want to play smart with them and they have laid down systems to help them figure out those people trying to play smart. Because if not so, how would somebody send a forged recommendation letter to a school abroad without thinking the school would find out somehow?

A school considering you for a graduate admission asks you to provide a referee from your first degree school, you went ahead putting just any staff from your school or from another school, your application is most definitely getting rejected! Why can’t you find a lecturer who taught you before? Most preferably your project supervisor or another lecturer from your department. If you can’t get any of these or in the case when you need multiple referees and you have already gotten some from your department, then you can  use someone from outside of your department who you can create the impression they have tutored you before or you have worked with them academically.

The funniest set of travel aspirants are the ones who collect reference letter from a lecturer and go ahead editing it for multiple use without the consent of the lecturer whose name and contacts are on the letter, like how could you not know the school you are sending the letter to would still contact the lecturer to ask for verification? I understand the process of getting a lecturer to recommend you is a very frustrating one as our Nigerian lecturers tend to act like gods when they are needed for these things, but it’s better for you to give it all you could and get the genuine recommendation that you need than getting a weak or fake one that would end up running all the efforts you have made on your international admission.

First Generation Nigerian Universities and their Lags in Transcript Production

First Generation Nigerian Universities and their Lags in Transcript Production

I have constantly heard testimonies from the alumni of some second and third generation schools in Nigeria about how their transcripts got delivered in less than 4 days—which is almost what transcript delivery should be like if our schools know what they are doing. Considering that the schools are aware that sooner or later, a student or an alumnus would need their transcript eventually, this should make the school take better care of the students’ results and also keep developing the processes involved in producing a transcript. It is shameful that most schools in Nigeria still produce such thing as a transcript depending on paper records, thereby making them need more resources—resources that are never available as needed.  For schools like OAU and UI that only started storing their results electronically and are still really struggling with producing transcript directly from these electronic databases, it makes it even more difficult realizing that these schools don’t have enough staff to make the production of transcripts easier, and half the staff they do have don’t like to do what they are employed to do.

If you are one of the lesser than 1% of alumni of these two schools who request for their transcripts and got it under two weeks without even involving any agent in the process, you would not understand what the ones who have to wait for months or even years are going through; some people’s case get so awful that even when they involve agents, their transcript would still not be delivered as when needed, and these can be blamed first on the lagging behind of the schools in ICT, then second on the government for not employing more human resources or monitoring the ones employed.  The fact that the last 3 years in Nigeria make the Transcripts Department of most schools (especially the first generation schools) better at revenue-generating, it should mean that more funds are returned to the department to keep the business growing to match up with its demands.

OAU and UI would receive at least the average of 100 transcript orders per day, this is a lot of gross profit considering the fact that these services are totally overcharged. In OAU for instance, an alumnus would pay approximately #10,500 to have their own transcript sent to their email. This would mean they should get good service worth the exploitative bill they have paid for such primary service. I used to think the reason why these schools have problems with producing transcripts fast is because they don’t have most of their results on an electronic database they can produce transcript from, but experiencing that people who graduated even in 2020 are going through the same hardship to get their transcript just as people who graduated in 2000 backwards are, this just invalidates the excuse that lack of database is the reason why transcripts are difficult to produce, databases are already well used in 2020. The primary problem is that these first generation schools move slowly towards getting digitalized, transcript production can get faster lest everything is totally digital.

The Kind of Recommendation or Reference Letter you May Need from your School

The Kind of Recommendation or Reference Letter you May Need from your School

Almost everyone trying to emigrate to the European countries and the Americas via admission often gets to need some sort of referencing or recommendation from their school; this is usually some sort of letter from some lecturers in your department or other departments. It may be one, two or three of them, but the idea is that these recommenders should be able to tell one or two things about your academic endeavours and your personal interests and attitudes, but unfortunately, this is where most people get it wrong, they just want anyone to do this for them.

I am aware how difficult it is to get those lecturers to reference you, as most of them just wait for when you need things like this for them to be vicious and stress you out or totally ignore you. But despite all these, when you eventually find someone to do this recommendation for you, you need to guide them on what exactly you need from them; don’t get recommended and the recommendation is irritating because it was lazily done. If possible, find a specimen of good recommendation letter and have your person use that as guideline defining what you want from them. I have seen a couple of recommendation letters and I knew within me I wouldn’t rate high such recommendation because they show obviously the recommenders don’t really know the person they are recommending.

I need to explain to those who may not know that recommendation letters come in different forms, some are papers (popular before the COVID-19 lockdown), some are electronics (became more popular during the COVID-19 lockdown). So if your aspired school is asking you for a recommendation letter, it’s most likely to be electronic they are requesting for; this would mean that you would insert your recommenders’ details in your application form and your aspired school would send a request to them after you have submitted the form. The recommender would respond to the request and that’s it. This happens to be easier than the paper one. If we are helping you get the letter this makes things easy for us; lecturers are not reluctant to do this, but they are usually reluctant to do a paper recommendation letter. So while applying, if you have the option to choose between electronic and paper recommendation, please choose the electronic one.

Old Graduates of OAU and UI Collecting their Certificates and Transcripts: The Rigour and Ways Out

Old Graduates of OAU and UI Collecting their Certificates and Transcripts: The Rigour and Ways Out

It would be wrong for any old alumnus of OAU and UI (or any other Nigerian school for that matter) to think that they would appear some decades after graduating to request for their transcript or/and certificate from their school and it would be easily provided to them like it’s not been decades since their documents have been passive; even alumni who graduated only about five years ago are having the problems of lost file, missing results, incomplete results and so on, not to talk of people who graduated in the 60’s, 70’s. 80’s, 90’s and even the early 2000’s. Even if nothing has happened to documents from these years, no staff wants to be the one to start looking for these documents here and there. Hence, when you apply for your document online as an alumnus from the old years, don’t expect that your application would not be abandoned. If you are an alumnus from the old years and you have applied for your document online for a while now and you are yet to receive it or see any progress on it, just know that it’s most probably abandoned.

The reason for abandonment of application to process documents of alumni from the old years can range from the fear that they would not be able to produce the document or the reality that they are not able to produce the document because something they need to be able to do so is missing. The schools are to be blamed for his bad recording and retrieval system, but then, if we asked you to provide your secondary documents you have with you which would be needed to make producing your primary documents easier, you most probably don’t have them anymore; you most probably can’t remember your matric number, you most probably don’t have your ID card anymore, you most probably don’t have any document approving your leave of absence or transfer to another department, you most probably didn’t do your clearance after graduating. So we can’t blame the schools alone, you waited for too long to need your documents from your school.

If you have been on the internet looking for answers to why your school is yet to deliver your document or may not be able to deliver it lest something is done, this is your answer. Now, what do you have to do to be able to get your document from your school if your year of graduation is up to a decade ago? I have published a write-up that is able to address cases just like yours and how you can solve the issues your document collection from your school is having or may have, read it here, follow the advice and be patient with the process. All the best.