The seven things a student visa file has to survive

Short answer: Refusals cluster. The same seven areas account for most of them, and almost every refused file has a problem in one of these.

Two honest warnings before the list.

This is not a checklist that produces a visa

There is no such thing. The decision belongs to the visa officer, who sees your whole file, applies rules I can read, and exercises judgement I cannot. Nobody can tell you what will tip a particular case, and anyone who says they can is selling something.

Some of these are published rules and some are judgement

I have marked which is which on every page, because the difference decides what effort is worth spending. A published rule you can meet exactly. A judgement you can only give the officer the evidence to make well.

	The area	Rule or judgement
1	Financial strength	Published rule, with a number
2	Flight risk	Judgement
3	Genuine student	Judgement
4	Document authenticity	Published rule, and a criminal matter
5	Academic logic	In the rules, assessed with judgement
6	Language	Published rule, with a level
7	Immigration history	Mostly unpublished

What to do with this

Work on the four published rules until you meet them exactly, because those are in your hands. For the three that are judgement, the only useful thing you can do is make the file complete, consistent and documented, and then accept that the decision is not yours. That is not a comfortable sentence, but it is the true one.

This page explains official rules in plain language. I am not an immigration adviser and I do not give visa advice. For that, always use official government sources. Rules change: confirm with your university, the embassy and VFS before you act.