Canadian PhD not complete (accompanying spouse)

[falernian]

Hi everyone,

Question re: education history for accompanying common-law spouse. My common-law spouse is four years into his PhD in Canada, in good standing but no degree yet. We'd rather not list his U.S. masters on his education history because we don't want to put the effort into getting the ECA (my points are high enough to make our profile competitive without him; we just want him to get PR now too).

Should we:

1. Fill in his partial Canadian PhD completion info and put his Level of education as a masters, then include an LOE explaining that his admission to a Canadian PhD program shows a Canadian university acknowledged the validity of his masters degree, or;
2. Should we put "No" to the "Has [spouse] finish high school or any higher education?" to avoid getting a request for an ECA for the masters degree? And if we didn't fill out his education history, would that be misrepresentation?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

 

[crescent_jam]

Hi everyone,

Question re: education history for accompanying common-law spouse. My common-law spouse is four years into his PhD in Canada, in good standing but no degree yet. We'd rather not list his U.S. masters on his education history because we don't want to put the effort into getting the ECA (my points are high enough to make our profile competitive without him; we just want him to get PR now too).

Should we:

1. Fill in his partial Canadian PhD completion info and put his Level of education as a masters, then include an LOE explaining that his admission to a Canadian PhD program shows a Canadian university acknowledged the validity of his masters degree, or;
2. Should we put "No" to the "Has [spouse] finish high school or any higher education?" to avoid getting a request for an ECA for the masters degree? And if we didn't fill out his education history, would that be misrepresentation?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

I think you need to include his full education history (for full disclosure), but I don't think you will be required to provide an ECA once you do, if you don't want to. Spouses aren't required to provide ECA's for their education - you just won't get any additional CRS points for it. At least this is my understanding (I don't have a spouse).

 

[falernian]

I think you need to include his full education history (for full disclosure), but I don't think you will be required to provide an ECA once you do, if you don't want to. Spouses aren't required to provide ECA's for their education - you just won't get any additional CRS points for it. At least this is my understanding (I don't have a spouse).

Thanks so much for this! I think it makes sense; I wasn't aware spouses might not actually have to provide an ECA.