Starting with a Canada students visa rejection rate of around 35% in 2019 with the beginning of Covid-19, it further went down to 60% in 2022.
Even the good profiles were being rejected without any reason and students had to wait 8-10 months or more to get visas but now in some relief the rejection rate has started improving though quite slow. Students with a gap of 3 years have got study visas in the past few weeks. Consultants said that one of the main reasons behind this improvement is that due to high rejection from Canada a large number of students applied for UK, USA and Australia students visas.
Narpat Babbar, a consultant and owner of Jupitter Academy in Jalandhar, said that earlier, the rejection rate had gone very high and of 10 Indian students only four were getting visas but in the past few weeks it has improved and now 5-6 students are getting a visa of 10 applications. “The Canadian government hardly considers a study gap of over two years but now even students with a gap of three years are getting visa,” he said.
Gurpreet Singh, consultant of Kapurthala-based i-Can, said that earlier good profiles were being rejected but now it is not. However, the pick and choose trend is still on, he added.
Khilandeep Singh, director of Ludhiana-based Can-Able Immigration Consultants, said that now a good number of students are getting visas despite an increase in visa applications.
Consultants said that a large number of Indian students mainly Punjabis take admission to colleges in Montreal (Quebec Province) and this trend remained the same during the pandemic. However, during the pandemic, owing to high admission rate of international students, the government listed 10 colleges for scrutiny purposes.
Babbar said that in the process some students got admission to these colleges in Montreal but got stuck due to scrutiny process. Three of these Montreal colleges were allegedly adopting wrong practices in admissions of international students and they were blacklisted after the scrutiny. Students who took admission to these colleges were advised by Indian High Commission to file a complaint with the Ministry of Higher education, the government of Quebec. These students were then being reviewed negatively but now they are being considered empathetically by the Canadian High Commission, he said.
Meanwhile, since Canada started rejecting applications, other countries such as UK, Australia and the USA started getting more applications. The British High Commission recently revealed that the UK has issued 1,17,965 sponsored study visas to Indian students in one year till June 2022, which is an increase of 215% compared to 2019 when only 37,396 sponsored study visas were issued. Also, India is at the top after getting the highest number of sponsored study visas from the UK and has even surpassed China. “ The student visa success rate in the UK is close to 100%,” said Chitresh Dhawan, owner of Dhawan Educational Consultancy in Amritsar, adding that sponsored student visa arrives in less than a month, which is the major attraction among the students.
Also, student acceptance rate in the US was 95% and in such a scenario, Canada could not take things for granted. Therefore, it started considering all cases carefully, a consultant said.
Consultants have advised students that to avoid rejection, they must submit every document in the same order as they are asked to along with the letter they received from their respective colleges. Also, students should mention their purpose of study in Canada with proper reason. In case, they face rejection they can appeal and reapply by taking the help of professionals. Students can visit the official websites of the Canadian government to seek help.
