Why nobody publishes a student visa success rate

Ask any consultancy in Dhaka what their success rate is and you will get a number, usually in the nineties. Ask where the number comes from and the conversation changes. There is no register it could be checked against, no authority that audits it, and no published figure it could be compared with. This site removed its own success-rate claim for exactly that reason.

So it is worth setting out, precisely, what does exist.

What is actually published, and what each thing measures

Why the type C figure is not your answer

The one number that does circulate is the Schengen refusal rate, and it is real. It is also a measurement of a different process: short-stay visitor visas, whose central question is whether the applicant will return within 90 days. A study programme longer than 90 days is a national long-stay visa or residence permit, decided by a national immigration authority against different criteria. We take that distinction apart in what the Schengen refusal rate actually measures and in national type D visa versus Schengen type C.

Treating the short-stay figure as a student figure is the single most common statistical error in this market — and it runs in both directions. Agencies quote it when they want to sound realistic, and ignore it when they want to sound confident.

Why the student number does not exist

Three structural reasons, none of them a conspiracy.

Long-stay visas are national competence. The Schengen rules that require consulates to report short-stay statistics do not impose the same reporting obligation on national type D visas and residence permits. Each country decides what to publish about them, and most publish little.

The decision often is not taken at the embassy at all. In Finland, Sweden and Denmark the residence permit is decided by the immigration authority before you travel; the mission only takes your identity data. So an "embassy approval rate" would not even be measuring the body that decides.

There is no agreed denominator. Do withdrawn applications count? Files that were never completed? Applications rejected as inadmissible before assessment? A rate is only meaningful if everyone counts the bottom of the fraction the same way, and nobody has agreed to.

What genuinely predicts an outcome

None of the following is a percentage. All of them are things you can inspect in your own file this week.

1. 1A funds trail with a history. Money that has been in the account for months, from an income source that explains it, in the sponsor's name, with the relationship documented. A balance that appears in one transfer three weeks before the appointment is the most common single weakness. See proof of funds and bank statements for a European student visa.
2. 2An institution that survives inspection. Public university, or a private one whose licence you can produce. Checking a private university or college.
3. 3A course that follows from your record. A change of field is fine if explained; an unexplained one is not.
4. 4Documents that agree with each other. Names, dates and spellings identical across passport, certificates and forms. Fixing a name mismatch.
5. 5A clean, complete file. Missing translations and unsigned forms cost decisions that had nothing wrong with them.
6. 6An honest history. Previous refusals disclosed and explained. Rejection reasons and reapplying.

What a real rate would have to say

This is worth spelling out, because it shows why the agency version cannot be repaired by asking for more detail. A meaningful figure would have to name the country, because the nine decide differently; the permit type, because a short-stay refusal has nothing to do with a study permit; the year, because rules and volumes move; the denominator, stating whether withdrawn, incomplete and inadmissible files are counted; and the mix of institutions, because a set of applications to public universities and a set to private colleges are not the same population and will not produce the same outcome. Strip any one of those away and the number stops meaning anything. No agency number carries even two of them.

There is a second problem underneath. A consultancy's rate, even if honestly recorded, describes the students it accepted — and a firm that only takes strong files will report a better number than one that takes everybody, while doing less for each of them. The figure that sounds like a measure of competence is partly a measure of who was turned away at the door.

Questions to ask instead of "what is your success rate"

• How many students did you send to this exact country last year, and can I speak to two of them?
• Which of my documents do you think is weakest, and why?
• What will you do if I am refused, and what does that cost me?
• Is this institution on the national regulator's register, and can you show me the entry?

An honest answer to the second question is worth more than any percentage, because it is the only one of the four that a consultancy cannot give without actually reading your file. Related reading: how to choose a study abroad consultancy and fake documents and agency fraud.

What we will and will not tell you

We will tell you which office decides, what it asks for, which parts of your file are weak, and what the published processing times are. We will not give you a probability, because we do not have one and neither does anyone else who is quoting you one.