What you actually need to study in Greece: five tests, and the apostille that will not help

Greece tests five things, and only five: the academic qualification you already hold, whether its paperwork can be legalised for Greek use, the language your programme is actually taught in, whether your money is documented to the level the consulate expects, and whether you clear the process gates in time. Every item on any Greece checklist you have been handed is evidence for one of those five.

The one that catches Bangladeshi families hardest is not on the checklist at all. An apostille is worthless for Greece. Bangladesh joined the Apostille Convention and it came into force on 30 March 2025 — but Greece objected under Article 12, as did Denmark and Finland. An objection means the Convention does not operate between the two countries at all. So the apostille you paid for is not a shortcut to Athens; Greece still requires the full consular legalisation chain. Italy, Cyprus, Hungary, Malta, Sweden and Bulgaria do accept the apostille. Greece does not. Both halves of that are load-bearing, and the versions circulating in this market get one half or the other wrong: see Bangladesh's apostille and the countries that refuse it and the attestation order that matters.

Test one: the qualification, and what each level needs

Greece judges the qualification you hold, not the years since you earned it. The institution you apply to evaluates a foreign qualification against its own published entry criteria, so those criteria are something to read rather than guess at.

At master's level the number that decides is credits. A three-year Bangladeshi pass degree is roughly 180 ECTS and a four-year honours roughly 240; most European master's need at least 180, so the four-year honours is accepted almost everywhere and the three-year pass is the problem case, usually fixed with a one-year Bangladeshi master's on top. The full working is in three-year pass versus four-year honours, and if your degree is from the National University or a private university, that question has its own answer.

On marks, no official universal CGPA conversion exists. The working rule is that 3.0 out of 4.0 is a common threshold, 3.5 and above is competitive for scholarships, and 2.5 to 3.0 means choosing programmes carefully rather than giving up: CGPA to European grades and studying in Europe with a low CGPA.

A study gap is accepted with an explanation. What fails is an unexplained gap, not a long one — the honest answer on gaps and how to write the explanation letter.

Test two: getting the paperwork recognised

This is where a Greek file is won or lost, because it is the slowest part and the part with the apostille trap in it.

The chain starts inside Bangladesh, not at an embassy. Certificates and transcripts are collected from the institution, verified by the education board where that applies, translated where required, and attested in the correct order — and the order is what people get wrong, because a document attested out of sequence has to be redone from the start. Work through transcripts, certificates and mark sheets, education board verification, notary, magistrate or MOFA, attestation for private and National University graduates and certified translation in Dhaka.

For a master's you will usually also be asked for course descriptions or syllabi so the institution can compare what you studied against its own curriculum: course descriptions and syllabi for credential evaluation.

Greece is also one of the countries that asks for a study plan — a document explaining what you intend to study and why it follows from what you have already done. It is not a formality and it is not your SOP reheated: the study plan document for Italy and Greece, alongside the statement of purpose and recommendation letters.

Then the identity documents that quietly sink files: a name that is spelled three ways across your NID, passport and certificates, a birth certificate that is not the 17-digit digital one, a passport renewed halfway through. Fix these first — name mismatch, the 17-digit birth certificate, the e-passport, photo specifications, police clearance and couriering documents from Dhaka.

Test three: language, which decides whether Greece is possible at all

Here is the part that reshapes the whole answer, and almost nobody leads with it.

Greek is the language of most public university teaching. The English-taught offer exists, but it is a specific catalogue of named programmes, not a version of the Greek system with the language swapped out. So the useful question is not "can I study in Greece in English" — it is "does an English-taught programme exist in my subject, and can I see it on the university's own page?" For a great many subjects the honest answer is that the door is narrow, and a student who needs breadth of choice will find more of it elsewhere.

Treat any claim about English-taught study in Greece as something to verify rather than believe: checking that a programme is really taught in English. The clearest single example we have written up is the English-taught medical degree at the University of Athens, and the wider trade-off is in English-taught or local-language programmes and how much Greek you really need.

On test scores, Greece publishes no national English requirement. Across the programmes we deal with, the floor we observe is about 5.5 and the typical ask is 6.0; English-medium programmes commonly publish 6.5. Those are our observations from programme pages, not a national rule, and nobody should quote them as one. A medium of instruction certificate is accepted by some programmes and refused by others, so it is checked per programme, never assumed: the MOI certificate, which universities accept an MOI letter and IELTS requirements by European country. IELTS on Computer was listed at BDT 29,600 in Bangladesh on 9 September 2026: IELTS from Bangladesh.

Test four: money, and the number that is not optional

The legal minimum is EUR 400 a month, which is EUR 4,800 a year, but consulates in practice look for EUR 600 to 700 a month — which is why the planning number is EUR 7,200 rather than the legal floor. Greece does not use a blocked account, so the money sits in an ordinary account and the quality of the evidence decides: proof of funds, what the officer is reading in a bank statement, the solvency certificate, sponsors and affidavits and why no blocked account.

Then the item that breaks Greek budgets: at least one third of tuition must be paid before the visa. Families plan to pay after arrival, and this moves real money forward by months. Add the Bangladesh-side spend on top — roughly BDT 3 to 5 lakh where the file is decided in Delhi, of which attestation, translation and legalisation are BDT 10,000 to 30,000 and courier BDT 4,000 to 9,000, plus an air ticket at BDT 70,000 to 120,000 one way. None of it comes back if the visa is refused. Sending the tuition itself has its own bank process: the student file and sending tuition from Bangladesh. The full country arithmetic is in what studying in Greece costs and tuition fees in Greece.

Test five: the process gates

Intakes are October and February. Submission and biometrics happen at the Greek visa application centre in Dhaka, open since February 2026; the decision is made by the Greek embassy in New Delhi and the file travels there by courier. You avoid the trip, not the Delhi timeline: where Bangladeshi students apply for a Greek visa and which visas are handled in Dhaka.

EU law gives a complete student application a maximum of 90 days for a decision under Directive 2016/801 — but the clock starts when the file is complete, so a missing document costs more than the queue does. You are applying for a national long-stay visa, not a Schengen short-stay one: type D versus type C, filling the form without mistakes, health insurance and the month-by-month timeline. Greece is in both the EU and Schengen: which of the nine are in what.

What is not a requirement, despite being widely believed

• An apostille. Not merely unnecessary — not accepted. See the top of this page.
• A blocked account. Greece does not use one. Anyone who tells you to open one has confused Greece with another country.
• A single national IELTS number. There is no published national rule; the programme page decides, and MOI works at some programmes.
• An unbroken study record. A gap with a documented explanation is accepted.
• A trip to New Delhi to submit. Submission is in Dhaka. Only the decision is in Delhi.
• Permission to work from day one. This is the reverse myth: people believe they gain something they do not. A non-EU student must obtain a separate work authorisation — student work rules in Greece.
• A visa success rate you can plan around. No authority publishes one, for Greece or anywhere: what the Schengen refusal number actually measures.

Who Greece is the wrong choice for

If you need to earn from month one to stay afloat, Greece is the wrong country. Work authorisation is a separate permission rather than an automatic right, no hours figure is published for you to plan against, and study years count only 50 per cent towards the five-year permanent residence clock while working years count in full. A plan that only balances if part-time income arrives on schedule is not a plan.

If your subject has no English-taught programme, Greece is the wrong country and no amount of file preparation changes that. And if you cannot move one third of tuition before departure, choose a country whose money sequence matches yours. The comparison worth reading before you commit is Greece versus Italy, and the honest summary of who Greece suits is what Greece is actually good for.

Greece rewards a different student: one with a subject that matches the English-taught catalogue, tuition at the low end of European public rates, a family able to fund the year properly, and patience for a legalisation chain that an apostille will not shorten. If that is you, start with the full Greece guide, the country page, Athens living costs and scholarships, honestly.

What to do first

1. 1Find an English-taught programme in your subject and verify it on the university's own page. If it does not exist, stop here and compare countries instead.
2. 2Read that programme's published entry criteria: qualification, marks, subject and language level.
3. 3Start the legalisation chain, because it is the slowest step and the apostille will not shorten it.
4. 4Build the money evidence for around EUR 7,200 a year, and separately budget the one third of tuition due before the visa.
5. 5Work backwards from October or February and book nothing that assumes a fast decision.