How ApplyBoard Enables Document Verification and Mitigates Application Fraud

With so many players operating within the international education landscape, document authenticity is a genuine concern. Key documents have been falsified by bad actors in the past, often without a student’s knowledge. University and college admissions teams need to be vigilant, but identifying whether a document is real isn’t typically quick or easy.

It can be, however, thanks to ApplyProof—ApplyBoard’s smooth answer to this prickly issue. Thanks to our secure, sector-leading ApplyProof solution, document authentication comes built-in with ApplyBoard application submissions to most Canadian institutions. Many key documents, including Canadian letters of acceptance and some language proficiency test results, are automatically made verifiable when submitted through our platform.

Here’s how.

Strengthening the Sector

As part of our Strengthening the Sector series, we’re exploring the many ways that ApplyBoard pushes the international education sector forward.

This time, our focus is on document authentication through ApplyProof, which helps ensure that fraud or misrepresentation is found and mitigated for student applications submitted through ApplyBoard.

Read the other articles in this series as they’re published:

• Recruitment Partner Vetting
• Ongoing Performance Monitoring
• Sector Training
• Application Pre-Screening
• Study Permit Approval Advantage

The Importance of ApplyProof

A lack of trust in international student documents negatively affects study permit outcomes and enrollment conversion. It also creates delays in study permit and admissions processing. Regular reports of fraud hamper institutions’ and Canada’s international education brand.

Recognizing the need to build trust and efficiency in the sector, ApplyBoard created ApplyProof, a digital interface for verifying key documents required in the admissions and study permit approval processes.

The tool is designed to support everyone involved in the international student enrollment process, from Canadian immigration officials and educational institutions to recruitment partners, students, and their families.

To confirm that a document is genuine, stakeholders use unique identifier codes, enabling them to securely access the up-to-date digital original through ApplyProof within seconds.

The key to ApplyProof’s efficiency: students do not pay to have their documents ApplyProofed. Moreover, they can share the document and have it verified as many times as needed, without additional cost. For verifiers, no login account is required; the document itself enables verification.

Read more on the ApplyProof website.

How ApplyProof Builds Trust

ApplyProof provides three types of verification:

Proof of Acceptance

ApplyProof enables officials to quickly verify the validity of letters of acceptance (LOAs) submitted as part of a Canadian study permit application.

How it works: A unique ApplyProof identifier code is appended to each ApplyProofed LOA. By entering this code on applyproof.com, officials can access and view the digital original. They can then easily compare the original document against the document submitted.

ApplyProof is easy to use—no login or account is required for verifiers. And the technology has been integrated with existing student information systems, CRMs, admissions software, and applicant databases.

ApplyProof has built a network of institutions across Canada and made over 600,000 LOAs verifiable to date.

Proof of Financial Support

ApplyProof has teamed up with RBC to offer Canada’s first digitally verifiable Guaranteed Investment Certificates (GICs). GICs are among the most trusted documents students can use to show proof of financial support as part of their study permit application. Students applying through Canada’s Student Direct Stream (SDS) are required to provide proof of a C$10,000 GIC.

How it works: As with ApplyProofed LOAs, our GICs include an ApplyProof code that immigration officials can use to verify the submitted GIC. Verifiable GICs can help students build stronger study permit applications and improve the chances that their applications are approved.

ApplyProof has also partnered with Flywire, one of the most trusted names in the international transfer of funds, to enable students to make digitally verifiable tuition payments. Tuition payments made through Flywire come with immediate, official, and verifiable payment receipts, which can then be submitted with a student’s study permit application as proof they’ve paid their tuition. To date, students have made over C$6 million in tuition payments verifiable on ApplyProof.

Did you know? In 24% of study permit refusal cases from 2021 and 2022, IRCC was not satisfied that the applicant’s assets and financial situation were sufficient to support their stated purpose of travel.

Proof of Language Proficiency

ApplyProof has partnered with Pearson Education and with ETS to provide verifiable PTE® and TOEFL® scores for millions of tests each year.

How it works: When students include their test scores in an application, admissions officers and immigration officials can simply enter the appointment number provided on the test results on applyproof.com to access the official scores in a matter of seconds.

Srikant Gopal, Executive Director of the TOEFL® program, commented on ApplyProof’s efficacy when the partnership was first launched back in 2021.

“ApplyProof facilitates a more seamless process in the verification of documents, like TOEFL scores, for both the students and institutions who rely on them for high-stakes decisions,” said Gopal.

“ApplyProof is more than just a promising solution. It accomplishes something very important for Canadian international education, bringing the kind of document security and efficiency we need to be responsible and competitive.” – Dr. Walter Lee, Senior Vice President, Yorkville University

Study Permit Approval Advantage

At a time when concerns about fraud remain high, ApplyProof’s Proof of Acceptance, Proof of Financial Support, and Proof of Language Proficiency solutions help build trust across the international education sector.

They’re also a key component of ApplyBoard’s study permit approval advantage.

For students and their advisors alike, the benefits of access to vetted recruitment professionals, application pre-screening, and document verification seem self-evident. But for anyone on the fence, the numbers, too, tell a clear story of student success. Students who use ApplyBoard have historically been approved for their Canadian study permit at a higher rate than students who don’t—especially students from countries with below average approval rates, such as Nigeria.¹

For the full story, look for the final entry in our Strengthening the Sector series, coming soon. Subscribe to ApplyInsights to ensure you don’t miss a thing.

About the ApplyInsights Team

FOOTNOTES:

1. Per ApplyBoard calculations and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) data.