The most requested document in a small school’s office is not the transcript. It is the one-page letter that says this person is enrolled here, since this date, full time, and is attending. A bank wants it, a landlord wants it, the DMV wants it, an employer wants it, and for a visa student an immigration officer may want it with attendance attached. Here is what the letter has to say, what the record behind it has to hold up, and why the second part is the one that gets schools into trouble.
Written October 2026 · Facts checked against 5 CCR § 71920, 8 CFR § 214.2(f)(6), studyinthestates.dhs.gov and ice.gov/sevis
The fields, and why each one is there
- The student’s legal name, as on the passport or ID
Not the name they go by in class. A bank matches the letter against an ID; a mismatch sends the student back to your office for a second letter.
- A student number, and for F-1 students the SEVIS ID
So the reader can tie the letter to a record. The SEVIS ID is on the I-20 and the officer will compare them.
- Program and current level, with the enrollment start date
“Intensive English, Intermediate B, enrolled since 6 January 2026.” For a vocational program, the program name as it appears on your BPPE approval and the start date on the enrollment agreement.
- Expected completion date
The program end date on the agreement, or the current session’s end for a rolling language program. Landlords and sponsors read this as “how long will they be here”.
- Enrollment status and hours per week
“Enrolled full time, 20 scheduled hours per week.” For an F-1 student this is the line the officer reads first, and 18 is the floor for a classroom program. State the scheduled hours; if asked for attendance, state attended hours separately and say which weeks.
- Attendance, only when it is asked for
Percentage and the period it covers, taken from the marks, not estimated. An attendance letter with a number on it is a certification; a wrong number is a problem for the school, not just the student.
- School identity
Legal name, address, the BPPE approval (and the SEVP school code for an F-1 letter), the signer’s name and title, the date, and a reference number so the letter can be verified by calling you.
The part that gets schools into trouble
The letter is easy. The problem is the two things around it. First, the numbers on it have to be true against the record, on the day they are checked, which may be two years later. A letter that said “attending full time” for a student whose attendance sheet shows three weeks of absences is a document the school signed. Second, the school has to be able to show what it issued. Section 71920 puts the documents the institution issued in the student’s file, so the letter you emailed in March, the one with the reference number, should be findable in September, with the request that prompted it.
In a paper office both fail the same way: the letter is typed fresh from a template each time, the attendance number is read off a binder and rounded, and the copy goes in a folder, or does not. Nobody is lying. The record just was not built to answer the question “what did we certify, and was it right”.
What the record has to hold up
Four things, per student, kept where the letter is generated from: the enrollment with its program, level and dates; the schedule, so scheduled hours per week is a fact and not an estimate; the attendance marks per session, so attended hours is a count; and the list of documents issued, with a number and a date on each. If a letter can be produced from those four without retyping, it will be right, and it will be findable.
What Udooku does about it, and what it doesn’t
Udooku issues enrollment verification letters from the student’s record, on every plan: the program, level and dates come from the enrollment, the scheduled hours from the cohort’s schedule, and the letter gets a number and stays in the student’s issued-documents list for good, with a reissue superseding rather than replacing. Attendance figures come from the marks the instructor made. Udooku does not decide what your letter should say, does not know your accreditor’s wording, and does not file anything with SEVP; the DSO still does that. How it fits a language school, and what a student leaves with on the how-it-works page.
