Every day our specialists in Broker Licensing receive emails and phone calls from broker license applicants who are receiving the following error message on their application, “Course completion confirmation from school not found.” There are essentially two reasons why this error appears on an application. The first reason is that a Course Completion Report (i.e. roster) has not yet been submitted by the education provider, and the second one is that the information submitted on the roster does not match what is on the application.
Every provider and instructor of prelicensing education knows to stress to their students the importance of not waiting to take the broker license examination after passing the prelicensing course. Commission Rule 58H .0207 requires education providers to submit a roster within seven days of the course completion date. Since most providers submit their rosters well within the seven-day requirement, the most common reason the above error appears is because the information on the application does not match what was submitted by the education provider.
A prelicensing roster must contain a student’s full legal first name, full legal last name (no nicknames, suffixes, middle names, middle initials, or punctuation), the last four digits of their Social Security Number (SSN), student contact information, the course completion date, the instructor number, and the number of the education provider. The most common conflict between the roster and the application is the name. The roster should only have the first and last name of the applicant even though the license application requires the full legal name and any suffixes.
If a student calls the education provider complaining of this error, the provider’s first step should be to verify the accuracy of the information they submitted on the roster. There is often a spelling error on the roster or the first and last names were accidentally switched, but the most common error is the student only gave the provider their preferred name and not their true legal name. If there is any error on the roster, the provider should be able to delete the student from it and submit a new one for just this student with their corrected information. If the student cannot be deleted from the roster, then the provider will need to contact the Education Department at educ@ncrec.gov.
If everything on the roster is correct and the student is still receiving this error, then there is a mistake somewhere on their application. They will need to proofread their application and make sure there are no typos and that they did not transpose any numbers. Sometimes there are leading or trailing spaces around the name in the name fields, and the application interprets that as an extra character. The best advice to give applicants is to clear out each name field, hit “backspace” and “delete” several times to eliminate any potential extra spaces, and then manually retype their name (do not let the browser auto-complete any fields). If the error still appears after following all of the above steps, the student should then be directed to call the Commission at 919-875-3700 and ask for “Broker Licensing.”
Finally, as it is required reading for the application and required to be reviewed per the prelicensing syllabus, educators should ensure they spend adequate time reviewing the application booklet, RELINC. Having a better understanding of the application process will also help clear confusion for prelicensing students so they know what to expect when it comes to finally submitting their application and getting ready to test.