Indian students mull other options as Australia, Canada reject visas

The US is back in favour along with the UK for overseas admissions in Spring semester of January 2022

An engineering graduate looking to study one-year post-graduate diploma in project management from Saskatchewan Polytechnic, Sajin J had all the right boxes ticked. Yet, the 25-year-old mechanical engineer was surprised to find his application rejected by Canada.

"I also found that several of my friends also had their applications and visas rejected ahead of the Fall semester. And in almost all cases, the reason cited was that Canada doubted whether we would leave the country after studies," Sajin told Business Standard, adding that he is now applying for the UK for the upcoming intake season.

As students prepare for the January semester admissions for overseas education, many like Sajin are increasingly preferring the US and the UK over Australia and Canada which are relatively closed and rejecting visas, respectively.

Around 15 per cent students who had planned to fly out of India by September had deferred their admissions to January and need to apply for visas 120 days before the semester begins. But even as they begin the process, many are hitting a wall when it comes to Canada and Australia.

"It seems Canada has reached a saturation point and now has more applications for each seat. The rate of visa rejection has increased post-pandemic for Canada. Secondly, the processing time for students is also quite longer at more than three months, compared to the UK, which takes less than two months to process admissions and visa," Sajin added.

Overseas education consultants are also seeing quite a shift in destination preferences among students. For instance, leading overseas education services provider Yocket, which saw 15 percent of its students defer admissions from Fall semester in July-August this year to Spring semester in January 2022, has seen a good traction for the US and the UK.

"Visa issues with Canada persists along with a long time taken for processing. This might be due to more supply than demand. Also, Australia is still uncertain about opening up its borders. On the contrary, the US and the UK are opening up rapidly and have eased a lot of norms for overseas students. Hence, while a large number of STEM students who were planning for Australia or Canada are looking at the US, non-STEM students are looking at the UK," said Sumeet Jain, co-founder of Yocket.

According to Jain, more than 50 per cent of students who were looking to go to Australia have moved to other more favourable destinations led by the US and the UK. Australia had so far adopted a zero-Covid strategy leading to closed internal and international borders, although the same is being re-looked at now.

Moreover, certain policy decisions and the political environment in the UK and the US are playing a role here. For instance, Arun Jagannathan, founder and CEO of CrackVerbal, another leading overseas education consulting firm, is witnessing the number of student registrations for the US for the January 2022 window as well as the Fall semester of 2022 reach levels of Obama era.

"The US is back in favour among Indian students and has in fact gone back to pre-Trump levels. Also, with the UK, its two-year work permit has spiked the interest. In Europe, the UK is now the preferred destination for Indian students. And more so for the Fall and Spring intake seasons since after Brexit, even non-UK Europeans need permits in the UK which seems to have helped Indian students," Jagannathan added.