Check any consultancy — including this one
Almost nothing an agency claims in this market can be checked. So instead of making a louder claim, we are handing you the tools to check anyone — and answering the same questions about ourselves below, including the ones we fail.
Take this list to the agency's website, or into your next meeting. Tick whatever you actually find and the verdict updates alongside it.
Tick the ones you actually find
- Serious
They offer to “arrange” a bank statement for money you do not have
How it sounds: “We'll handle the statement.” “Just park some money for a few weeks.” “The balance can be managed.”
Showing money that is not yours is document fraud. It is one of the most common reasons a student visa is refused, and if it is caught you lose more than the visa — you can lose the right to apply to that country, and often the whole Schengen area, for years. Nothing happens to the agency. The record attaches to you, in your name, on your passport.
- Serious
They publish a visa “success rate”
How it sounds: “98% success rate.” “100% visa success.” “High visa ratio.”
No embassy, ministry or authority anywhere publishes visa approval rates by consultancy. So nobody can check these numbers — not you, and not the agency quoting them. The embassy decides the visa, not the agency, which makes a “success rate” an advertisement rather than a measurement. Worth knowing: several of the largest agencies in this market publish rates that contradict each other on their own websites.
- Serious
They guarantee a visa, a job, or permanent residence
How it sounds: “Visa guaranteed.” “Job guaranteed.” “Study and earn — income assured.” “PR in two years.”
No agency can issue a visa, so no agency can guarantee one. Guarantees about jobs or permanent residence are further still from anyone's control — those sit under different laws, with different authorities, and depend on your results and your language ability. A firm willing to guarantee something it does not control has told you nothing about what else it is overstating.
- Important
They will not put the total cost in writing before you pay
How it sounds: Reluctance to name a total, “we'll tell you later”, or a figure given only verbally.
Publishing a fee is simply not done in this market — not one of the seven largest agency sites reviewed publishes a service fee. That makes asking for it in writing normal, not rude. Check that three things are itemised separately: the consultancy's own fee, university fees, and embassy fees. If there is a refund clause, check who decides whether it applies — “refunded if the refusal was our fault” is a promise the agency grades itself on.
- Important
There are numbers, but no link to any official source
How it sounds: Tuition, bank-balance and working-hours figures with no ministry, embassy or university page behind them.
Financial requirements change every year. Italy's went up roughly 46% in a single step for the 2026/27 intake. A page with no source gives you no way to tell whether its number is current — and arriving at the consulate short of the required amount is a refusal. A source link means you can check it yourself instead of trusting anyone.
- Important
Nothing says when the information was last checked
How it sounds: “2026 latest update” in the headline, and no date anywhere in the page itself.
Putting a year in a title is easy; re-checking the facts is not. On one popular site, 185 of its 189 articles carry an identical last-modified date — one bulk re-stamp, with nothing actually re-verified. If freshness is being claimed, there should be a source sitting next to the claim.
- Important
They show accreditation badges but no certificate number or name
How it sounds: “British Council certified”, “ICEF trained” — with no person named, no certificate number, nowhere to look it up.
These sound alike and are not alike. ICEF Agency Status is an organisation-level accreditation you can look up in a public register. An “ICEF trained counsellor” certificate belongs to one individual, not the firm. And the British Council states plainly that it does not endorse, accredit or validate agents at all — it certifies a person's knowledge of the UK as a destination. On an agency selling Italy or Hungary, that badge proves nothing whatsoever about Europe.
- Worth noting
University logos on display, with no evidence of any agreement
How it sounds: Rows of well-known university logos, with no agent ID, no partnership statement and no link.
Anyone can place a logo on a page. Genuine representation usually means the agency appears on the university's own list of agents. If you are unsure, email the university's admissions office and ask — they are not obliged to reply, but most do.
- Worth noting
Students' photos and visa documents are published with no mention of consent
How it sounds: Dozens of named “successful students” with photographs, or images of visa stickers, and not one sentence about permission.
A visa document carries a passport number, a date of birth and a photograph. A firm that publishes a former student's documents without saying it had permission is a firm that may one day publish yours the same way. This is a question about how your personal data will be handled, not about manners.
- Worth noting
They will not tell you who is actually handling your file
How it sounds: Only “our experienced counsellor team” — no name, no role, no direct contact.
A name creates accountability. If something goes wrong in six months, you need to know today who you will be asking. How many people work there matters far less than whether one of them is answerable for your file.
Four public places. For each one we say what it proves — and, just as importantly, what it does not.
RJSC — company registration
Proves: That the firm legally exists as a registered Bangladeshi company or partnership, and under what name.
Does not prove: Any competence or authorisation to advise students. Registration means the company exists — nothing about whether it is any good.
- 1Open roc.gov.bd and go to the name-search option.
- 2Search the firm's full legal name — the one on its invoice or contract, not the name on the signboard.
- 3If nothing matches, ask them for the registered name. A firm unwilling to tell you its own legal name has answered the question.
ICEF Agency Status — international accreditation
Proves: That the agency has passed ICEF's independent vetting and signed its Code of Conduct. It is among the most meaningful checkable credentials in this sector, and each accredited agency has a certificate number you can look up.
Does not prove: Service quality, or your chances of a visa. And importantly: absence from the directory does not mean an agency lacks accreditation. ICEF states that directory listing is optional and some accredited agencies choose not to appear. Treat this as a test that can confirm a credential, never one that can disprove it.
- 1Open the IAS directory on icef.com — no login needed.
- 2Filter by country (Bangladesh), or search the agency's name directly.
- 3If you find them, check the certificate number and expiry. If an agency will not give you its own certificate number, that is also an answer.
British Council — trained counsellor database
Proves: That a specific named individual completed British Council training. The list is public and searchable.
Does not prove: Endorsement or accreditation of any kind. The British Council states it does not formally endorse, accredit or validate agents and counsellors — it awards a digital certificate for knowledge of the UK as a study destination, and only to an individual, never to a company. It is also entirely UK-specific: it says nothing about any European country.
- 1Open the British Council agents and counsellors database.
- 2Search by country and by the person's name — the certificate belongs to a person, not to a firm.
- 3If a firm advertises “British Council certified”, ask which individual holds it, and how it relates to studying in Europe.
The trade licence — and why it is not enough
Proves: Permission from a city corporation or local authority to operate a business. Every legitimate business has one, from a tea stall to a consultancy.
Does not prove: Anything specific to education consultancy — because Bangladesh has no mandatory licensing regime for this sector and no central authority overseeing it. An estimated 70,000 to 90,000 students consult agencies every year, with no government system for verifying any of them. So “we are licensed” can be perfectly true and still tell you nothing beyond the fact that the business is trading legally.
- 1Ask for both the licence number and the issuing authority.
- 2Check that the name matches: the licence, the bank account you are asked to pay, and the contract should all carry the same name.
- 3Treat it as the floor, not the ceiling. The ten questions above tell you far more than a trade licence does.
This page would be worthless if we exempted ourselves. Two of the answers below are no, and they stay no until they are genuinely yes.
Do you publish a visa success rate?
No, and we never will — a number nobody can verify is worth nothing. This site previously carried two claims, “96% visa success” and “1000+ students since 2019”. Both were removed: the first cannot be evidenced, and the second was simply false, because the company was founded in 2023.
Is there a source behind your numbers?
Every country page carries a last-verified date and links to the official sources behind its figures — ministry circulars, embassies, immigration authorities. You can check the number against the authority's own page rather than taking our word for it.
For example — the Italy guide and its sourcesDo you have a trade licence?
Yes — TRAD/DSCC/026481/2024, issued by Dhaka South City Corporation. But what we wrote above applies to us too: that is permission to run a business, not an education-sector accreditation. Every legitimate firm has one, so presenting it as a distinction would be dishonest.
Do you hold ICEF Agency Status?
No. Around 58 agencies in Bangladesh hold it and we are not among them — and we are not going to imply one is coming by saying “not yet”, because we have not applied. If that changes, the certificate number will appear here so you can check it yourself. Until then this box says no.
Do you hold a British Council certificate?
No. And honestly, it would not be relevant if we did: we work on Europe, not the UK, and that certificate is about the UK. An agency selling European destinations while displaying that badge is showing you something unrelated to what it is selling.
Will you put the cost in writing before we start?
Yes — our service fee, university fees and embassy fees itemised separately, before anything begins. Our policy is “no visa, no fee”: if a properly prepared file is refused, our service fee is returned.
How the service and fees workWill you tell us who is handling the file?
Yes. Md. Salahuddin, the founder, oversees admissions, visa strategy and document assessment, and the articles on this site are published under his name. We are a small firm — that is not something to hide, and it means you know who you are dealing with.
About usDo you get consent before publishing a student's photo or documents?
Yes. Publishing a student's name or photograph requires consent, and our own publishing system refuses to release the post without it. We do not publish images of anyone's passport or visa documents at all.
Have you ever got something wrong, and written it down?
Yes — the two false claims above were on this site and were removed, and the reasons are recorded in the code so nobody restores them later. A firm that has never corrected anything is either very new or is not writing it down.
These claims circulate widely. We name no site — each correction carries an official or primary source so you can check it yourself.
“Italy only needs about €467 a month in your account.”
For 2026/27 Italy requires €10,179.85 for the year — up from €6,947.33, a rise of roughly 46% in one step. Build a file on the old figure and you arrive around €4,500 short, and that is a refusal. This is exactly the kind of number that moves annually, which is why a figure without a source should not be trusted.
“An Italian student visa is valid for five years.”
It is not a flat five years. The type-D visa is granted against your course, and the permesso di soggiorno per studio you apply for after arriving is tied to the course length with an annual academic-progress check — and cannot run more than three years beyond the end of the course. Planning around an imagined five-year permit means the renewal conditions never enter your budget.
“If you don't have enough in the bank, a statement can be arranged.”
That is not advice, it is fraud. Showing money that is not yours is document fraud; if it is detected you face refusal and lasting damage to future applications, and the record follows you, not the agency. There are real alternatives: a documented sponsor, a scholarship, a lower-cost country, or waiting a year and building genuine funds. Those are slower. They do not cost you your future.
“Ireland and Cyprus are in Schengen, so they're easy to get into.”
Neither is in the Schengen area. Cyprus is an EU member but not a Schengen member — those are two different things, and the difference affects both your visa and your travel. (Bulgaria and Romania did become full Schengen members on 1 January 2025.) This is precisely why every country page on this site lists “EU” and “Schengen” as two separate facts.
“Studying in Hungary costs BDT 4–6 lakh.”
It can — but many of the pages quoting that figure never mention Stipendium Hungaricum at all. It is the Hungarian government's fully funded scholarship: tuition waived, a monthly stipend and a housing contribution, and Bangladeshi students are eligible. Applications generally close in January. Advice that gives you a cost without telling you the funding exists is incomplete advice.
“VFS Global is a trusted agency.”
VFS Global is not a consultancy. It operates the centres that accept applications and collect biometrics on behalf of embassies. It does not build your file, does not advise you, and has no role in the decision. “We'll get your visa done through VFS” is itself a warning sign, because submitting at VFS is something you can do yourself.
Check first, then decide
Work with us or don’t — but ask any firm the questions above. And if you would rather apply on your own, the entire process is written out here, step by step, for free.