On a CV, a foreign degree is worth what the reader can work out from it in a few seconds. Put "Licenciatura en Administracion de Empresas, Universidad de Montealto" in front of a recruiter in Manchester and they have to guess the level, the subject and whether the school is any good. Few of them guess generously, so the translation work falls to you.
The fix is small. One carefully built line per qualification does more than a paragraph of explanation, and you can build it piece by piece.
Keep the original name, then add a short local equivalent
The default pattern is the qualification exactly as it appears on your diploma, followed by a short local equivalent in brackets.
- Licenciatura en Derecho (bachelor's level, Law), Universidad de Montealto, Colombia, 2016
- Diplom-Ingenieur Maschinenbau (master's level, Mechanical Engineering), Technische Hochschule Nordstadt, Germany, 2014
- Master 2 Finance d'entreprise (master's level, Corporate Finance), Universite de Valrive, France, 2019
Keeping the original name does two jobs. It matches your diploma, your transcript and any verification check an employer runs later, and a mismatch between the CV and the paperwork looks worse than an unfamiliar word. It also tells a reader from your home country exactly what you hold, which happens more often than people expect.
The bracket does the translation, so keep it short. One distinction is worth getting right. "Master's level" is your own honest reading of the degree. "Equivalent to a UK master's" implies that an official body has confirmed it. Save the second wording for when you actually have that confirmation.
When the local equivalent goes first
Flip the order when the original name is very long, written in a non-Latin script, or so unfamiliar that it gets in the way. Flip it as well when the posting filters on level, for example a graduate scheme asking for "a master's degree or equivalent". Put the word the recruiter is scanning for at the front:
- Master's degree in Civil Engineering (original: Inzhener-stroitel), Polytechnic Institute of Eastport, 2015
Either way, the original name stays somewhere on the line. Drop it and you make verification harder for the one person who wants to say yes to you.
Translate the field of study without inflating it
The subject is where people quietly over-claim. A degree in "Economia" is economics, not "Economics and Strategic Management". A "Diploma in Informatics" is computer science, not "Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence".
Translate as literally as you can while still making sense in English. Where a word-for-word version would mislead, pick the nearest honest term. "Ciencias Empresariales" becomes "Business Studies", which is accurate, rather than "Business Administration (MBA track)", which is not.
If your degree had a real specialisation, name it after the main subject: "Economics, specialisation in econometrics". If it did not, do not invent one to match the job advert. An interviewer who reads your transcript, or who happens to come from your home country, will notice, and that is a much harder conversation than any unfamiliar subject name.
Describe an unknown institution in a few words
A handful of universities are known everywhere. Most are not. If yours is unlikely to ring a bell where you are applying, add a short descriptor after the name:
- Universidad de Montealto, Colombia (public research university)
- Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Valrive, France (business school, selective entry)
- Technische Hochschule Nordstadt, Germany (university of applied sciences, engineering focus)
The country is the minimum. The type of institution is the useful extra, because it tells the reader what kind of training sits behind the degree. What you should skip is a ranking you half remember, or "one of the top universities in the country" with nothing to back it up. Without a source the reader would recognise, it reads as padding and invites a check you did not need.
Grades: describe them plainly or leave them off
This is the part most people get wrong. They take a 16 out of 20, or a 4.5 out of 5, and convert it into a UK classification or a US GPA. Please do not. Grading scales do not map neatly onto each other, published conversion tables disagree, and a converted figure that looks off to someone who knows both systems costs you more than it earns.
You have two honest options.
- Describe a strong result in plain words. "Graduated with honours", "ranked first in a cohort of 120" or "highest distinction" all work, provided they are true and appear on your paperwork. Keep the original term in brackets ("summa cum laude", "mention tres bien") so it can be checked.
- Leave the grade off. If the result was average, or the scale is genuinely hard to read, say nothing. An education entry without a grade is completely normal, and nobody marks you down for its absence.
A grade the reader cannot interpret is not neutral. It is noise. Either turn it into a plain statement of how you did, or drop it.
When an employer sets a minimum grade, the posting usually tells you how to evidence it, often through an official comparability document. Which brings us to the next line.
Add a recognition statement when you have one
If you have been through an official recognition or comparability process, put the outcome on its own line under the degree. This is the most persuasive thing you can add, because it swaps your judgement for an official one.
Some examples, named only as illustrations, since the bodies and procedures differ by country and change over time:
- In the UK, a statement of comparability from UK ENIC, which sets out how your qualification compares with British ones.
- In France, an attestation de comparabilite issued by the ENIC-NARIC centre.
- In Spain, the homologacion or equivalencia procedure for foreign university qualifications.
The line itself stays short: "UK ENIC statement of comparability: comparable to a British bachelor's degree (2023)." Do not paste the reference number and do not attach the document.
If you have not been through any process, do not apologise for it on the CV. Leave the line out. For plenty of private-sector roles nobody asks, and where it is required, the posting tends to say so plainly.
Copies, translations and a few neighbouring cases
Diploma copies and certified translations belong in your folder, not in your application. A short note at the end of the education section is enough: "Diploma copies and certified translations available on request." It tells the reader that verification will be easy, without adding pages nobody asked for. The exception is a posting that asks for them up front. Then follow its instructions to the letter.
Regulated professions get one sentence here: in medicine, nursing, law, teaching or architecture, recognising the degree is usually a separate step from the licence to practise, and the licence is what the employer screens on first, which our piece on professional registration on a CV covers in detail.
A few nearby situations are handled elsewhere. The cover letter is the place to explain your qualifications at length, not the CV. If an online form forces you to pick from an education dropdown that does not list your degree, choose the nearest honest option and clarify in a free-text box if there is one. An unfinished degree follows its own rules.
Putting the line together
Here is a complete education entry built from everything above:
Licenciatura en Administracion de Empresas (bachelor's level, Business Administration)
Universidad de Montealto, Colombia (public research university), 2012 to 2017
Graduated with honours (mencion honorifica)
UK ENIC statement of comparability: comparable to a British bachelor's degree
Four lines, no conversion, no inflation, nothing that cannot be checked. A reader who has never heard of the university now knows the level, the subject and the type of school, and can see that an official body has looked at the degree.
If you build your CV from your LinkedIn profile, check the education section there too. The degree name often sits in whatever language you first typed it in, and a tool like Postulit carries that text straight into the CV, so fixing the wording once on the profile keeps it consistent everywhere.
Before your next application, read each education line with one question in mind: could a recruiter who has never set foot in your home country tell the level, the subject and the kind of institution at a glance? If not, add the bracket, the descriptor or the recognition line, and cut the grade unless you can state it plainly.