About to Apply for My License, But Plan to Move, Foreign Degrees...

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eneuner

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Hello everyone,

I have passed the PE exam and my current state of residence is Texas. Based on TSPE (Texas Society of Professional Engineers), I am now eligible to be licensed. I have a PhD from a school in the US, however my bachelor's and master's are from foreign institutions. I also have official translations of my degrees and transcripts, sealed. Now from similar cases my friends from my country shared, in Texas if one applies through the state board (rather than NCEES), one can email or include a copy of his/her official translations and send over to the board and that is sufficient for the Board to consider it legit. However, moving to another state, as I heard, requires going through NCEES verification process and NCEES is pretty strict about receiving the items directly from the institution and does not accept receiving them from the applicant.  The other problem is that the foreign institutes I have my degrees from are pretty clumsy in sending the materials abroad and it would be best if I am present there to make this happen smoothly. 

I am considering a number of job offers in different states and am leaning towards moving to California. I know that I probably do not have to take the PE exam again and this counts for the 8-hour exam in CA. I also understand, I have to take the seismic and surveying exam as well to be qualified for a California PE. So it looks like another year or so to be qualified for the California PE.

So, at the time being, I am not quite sure which approach would be better for me:

1- Apply for my Texas PE license, and when moved to CA follow the procedure there. The question here is that does CA accepts me sending my official transcripts to the board, similar to how they do it in Texas, or should it go through NCEES' more strict process?

2- Wait until I pass the rest of the exams, and then submit my application in CA  and see how it goes. The question here would be if CA needs another set of reference letters, or if my current reference letters in TSPE letterhead would be acceptable by CA.  

3- Just go through the NCEES process and as much as cumbersome it looks, try to do it the NCEES way and save headaches in the future?

Any helps will be appreciated.

 
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