Validation of Acceptance Letters issued by the UC

The UC has created the Acceptance Letter with electronic validation with the objective of facilitating and streamlining the procedure to obtain a Visa and other essential formalities so that a foreign Student may attend our University.

What is an Acceptance Letter with electronic validation?

The University of Coimbra provides the Acceptance Letter with electronic validation to Foreign Students (non-Portuguese nationality) admitted to and registered for a Bachelor’s, Master’s, PhD or Non-Degree Course.

The validity of this Acceptance Letter is the same as the validity of a paper document, but it adds the security of being able to be revoked in case of error detection, loss or theft.

How does this document work?

This document is issued only in the academic year of the enrolment, that is, in the first year and first time the student registers for that cycle of studies or course.

It is provided free of charge to the Student by means of the Academic Information Technology System and is written in Portuguese and English.

It contains the address of the Student in Portugal, and if he/she has not a national address yet, the address of the services of the University Administration that deal with this academic issues will be used.

• In order to respond to several requests, the UC added the beginning and ending dates of the academic year and the minimum length of the cycle of studies in semesters or, in the case of Non-Degree courses, in other unit such as trimester or week.

The date the document contains is the date on which the student confirmed his/her enrolment and registration at the University.

How to ascertain its authenticity?

The Acceptance Letter is a file in PDF format (Portable Document Format) to which a 23 characters alphanumeric access key was associated by means of which it is possible to confirm its data and whether it is a valid document.

This file may be downloaded by means of the personal area of the Student at the Academic Information Technology System of the University whenever he/she wants.

• The electronic issuance of certificates substitutes the delivery of paper documents by the sending of an access code to the certificate in Portugal or abroad, since it was carried out within the scope of the measure “M023 - Permanent Certificate of Higher Education Qualifications” of the Simplex 2010 Programme which enables the issuance of dematerialised certificates.

How to validate an Acceptance Letter?

Step 1:: Obtain the Validation Key
If you receive a printed document, you should find the authentication key at the bottom of the first page. If you receive only the key, via email or another means, you should proceed to the next step. 

Step 2:: Access the UC webpage to authenticate documents
Access directly the website https://verificacaodocumentos.uc.pt, or click the menu option “Validating a Document” under “Documents Authentication” on this website.

Step 3 :: Enter Key and the data that are requested
Enter the “Key” that you obtained in Step 1 and the “Security Code” that is shown, and click on the green button “Authenticity Key Verification”.

Step 4:: View the content of the Acceptance Letter
At the bottom of the webpage a new area will appear showing the “Data of the Document” and the summary of the information concerning the document. To access it, click on the Button with the name of the file and verify its content. If you have received a paper document, verify whether the data are the same. If the document is invalidated, that information will appear.

What does it mean to be valid or invalid?

When you access the area “Data of the document” you are going to see also a button with the information “Valid”. A document after being generated always becomes valid. The status of Invalid may happen:

• Whenever the UC generates a new Acceptance Letter, since the status of the previous one is automatically changed into Invalid. In the field “Reason for Invalidation” the sentence “This document was invalidated and substituted by a new document” will appear.
• If there is a situation which leads the UC to consider that its content is not valid. Therefore, this information may be indicated in the field “Remarks”.