All the documents regarding the applicant’s education need to be legalized or apostilled. Authentication (legalization or apostille) of documents means the affirmation of their authenticity, which gives the legal force outside the borders of the country of issue. The method of authentication depends on the country of origin of your high school certificate / university diploma.
 

Apostille

An apostille is a type of simplified document authentication procedure. It confirms the official status of a domestic document that needs to be used abroad: the authenticity of the signature, the capacity in which the person who signed the document acted and the identity of the seal or stamp on the document.
The legal basis providing for the use of apostilles is laid down in Article 3 and Article 4 of the Hague Convention of 1961 - the Convention abolishing the requirement to legalize foreign official documents, developed at The Hague on October 5, 1961 (Journal of Laws of 2005 No. 112, item 938). In practice, it consists in obtaining a special stamp on public documents or in attaching the clause to the document on a slip of paper. When the procedure has been completed, the document may be freely and, most importantly, lawfully used in another state.
Apostilles are recognized and issued by Poland and over 120 other countries. An up-to-date list of states party to the Hague Convention of 1961 is available on the HCCH website.

How to apostille a foreign document?

Each state which is a party to the Hague Convention designates its own authorities, which are competent to issue apostilles. The list of state institutions which issue apostilles is available on the HCCH website. 

NOTE that a university stamp on your diploma and transcript is NOT an apostille – you need to apply for an apostille at an appropriate institution in the country where your diploma was issued. 

In the absence of an apostille on the documents at the stage of registration in the online recruitment system, the candidate should fill out and upload a "Statement - Apostille", which can be downloaded from the "Documents and further steps" section of the IRK account. The candidate is obliged to provide apostilled documents upon arrival. Failure to fulfill this obligation within the prescribed deadline will result in the inability to be enrolled on the student list. 

Exemptions:

• UKRAINE - Candidates applying for admission to studies on the basis of documents issued in Ukraine may be exempt from the obligation to obtain an apostille, provided they present a printout from the "Unified State Electronic Database on Education" of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (EDBO) confirming the verification of the document entitling them to study.
• MERCURI and Magellan Master's programs - applicants to the MERCURI and Magellan Master’s programs who hold a diploma issued by one of the partner universities may be exempt from the requirement to obtain an apostille on that diploma.

Legalization

Legalization is required documents issued in a state that is not a party to the above-mentioned Hague Convention. 

Legalization can be done by:

• consul of the Republic of Poland, competent for the country on whose territory or in whose education or higher education system a given document was issued, or
• diplomatic mission or consular office accredited in Poland or another EU/EFTA/OECD member state of the country on whose territory or in whose education or higher education system the document was issued.

List of Poland's missions abroad.

The documents must be authenticated by the competent local authority before you present them to the consul. In most countries authentication is made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Justice or another central authority of the document's country of origin. The consul will refuse to legalise documents without prior superlegalization.

In the absence of full legalization of the documents at the stage of registration in the online recruitment system, the candidate must present documents authenticated by the the competent local authority (in most cases it is Ministry of Foreign Affairs), together with a "Statement - Legalization", which can be downloaded from the "Documents and further steps" section of the IRK account. The candidate is obliged to provide full legalization of these documents upon arrival. Failure to fulfill this obligation within the prescribed deadline will result in the inability to be enrolled on the student list.