Translations for UCAS and university admissions

Where translation enters a university application

Undergraduate applications go through UCAS: you enter your qualifications in the form, a referee writes a reference, and universities ask for documents when they make or confirm an offer. Postgraduate applications go direct to each university’s portal and usually ask for the degree certificate and transcript up front. In both cases an admissions officer who cannot read Turkish needs an English version of your lise diploması, transcript or university record, and later, when the offer becomes a confirmation of acceptance for studies, the Home Office may want the same documents for the Student visa. A translation ordered once serves all of these stages if it is done properly the first time.

What UCAS says about translations

UCAS’s guidance on uploading documents is summarised in the box: a document not in English must be accompanied by a translation made by a professional translator or translation service and uploaded alongside the original, and translations made by the applicant are not accepted. Universities may add their own rules, and some ask for a UK ENIC statement; the ENIC page explains that. Our certification carries the accuracy statement, date, signature, company name, Ankara registry number and contact details on every page, and UCAS and universities have accepted it to date. No notarisation is involved.

Turkish documents admissions teams ask for

• Lise diploması, the school-leaving diploma, for undergraduate entry.
• School transcript (lise not dökümü) showing subjects and grades for each year, and a student certificate (öğrenci belgesi) if you are still at school.
• YKS, YÖS or other exam results where the university uses them for entry or scholarships.
• A reference or predicted-grades letter written in Turkish by your school, if your referee cannot write in English.
• For postgraduate entry: lisans diploması and university transcript, plus course descriptions where the department wants to check prerequisites or credit transfer.

What holds up offers

• A translation done by the applicant, a parent or a teacher, which UCAS’s guidance rules out.
• The diploma translated but not the transcript, so the admissions team cannot see grades by subject.
• Grades on the Turkish 100-point scale converted into UK grades by the translator; universities do their own conversion, so we render the scale as printed.
• Turkish subject abbreviations on the transcript left unexplained (we expand them and keep the Turkish in brackets).
• A graduation certificate issued in June while the diploma follows later, with no explanation of which document is which.
• Names spelt one way on the UCAS form and another on the diploma.

How we prepare admissions translations

Send scans of the diploma and every page of the transcript, plus any letters from the school. We translate the full document, keep the grading scale and Turkish award titles as printed with a literal English rendering, spell your name as on your passport, and return a certified PDF that you can upload to UCAS, a university portal and, later, the visa application. A lise diploması is £10; a school transcript 2–4 pages, £20–40; a university transcript 3–6 pages, £30–60. Delivery is 1–2 working days, and same-day service is available for a single certificate when a deadline is close. No UK VAT is charged. For the full sequence from application to visa, read Turkish students applying to UK universities, and for the question of who may translate, can I translate my own documents?