The UK Student Visa, Step by Step: Documents, Money, and Timelines

The UK visa process has a reputation for being complicated. It isn't, really. It's a checklist with unforgiving rules about sequence and timing, and the students who get refused are usually the ones who treated the sequence as optional. This guide walks the whole thing in the order it actually happens, with the current numbers, because half of what ranks on Google for this query still quotes last year's figures.

Your Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies is a reference number your university issues after you've accepted an unconditional offer and, usually, paid a deposit. It is not a document you can apply for. It is not something an agent can produce. The university generates it, and your visa application cannot be submitted until it exists.

Two things about the CAS trip students up.

First, it expires. You must use it within six months of issue, and you can only apply for the visa up to six months before your course starts. Those two windows mostly overlap, but if your CAS is issued early and you delay, you can run it out.

Second, everything on it must match your documents exactly. Passport number, name spelling, the fee amount already paid. A CAS showing your old passport number because you renewed mid-process is one of the most common self-inflicted delays we see. If anything changed after your CAS was issued, tell your university before you apply, not after.

One recent change worth knowing: the UK now records whether a CAS application came through an agent, which changes nothing about what you submit but does change what universities track. We covered the detail in our guide to the UK's new CAS rule for agent-based applications.

The maintenance requirement is the single most misunderstood part of the process, so here are the current figures without decoration.

So a student with £10,000 of unpaid fees heading to a London university must show £23,761. The same student at a university in Coventry needs £20,539. "London" means your main study site sits in one of the 32 boroughs or the City of London; if your university has multiple campuses, the location on your CAS decides.

Note the numbers went up. Applications before 2026 used £1,334 and £1,023. If your budget was built on a guide written last year, you are short by roughly £1,700 for London. Rebuild it.

Then there is the 28-day rule, which causes more refusals than any other single mechanism. The full required amount must sit in the account for 28 consecutive days without dipping below the threshold even once, and the closing balance of the statement you submit must be dated within 31 days of your application. Not roughly a month. Twenty-eight days, checked line by line.

What this means in practice: a parent transferring the funds in two weeks before you apply doesn't work. The clock restarts every time the balance dips. And a single large deposit shortly before application gets flagged for manual review even when the maths works, because UKVI's screening looks for exactly that pattern. If family money is funding this, consolidate it into one account at least two months before you plan to apply and then leave it alone.

Using a parent's account is fine, but it comes with its own paperwork: their bank statements meeting the same 28-day standard, your birth certificate proving the relationship, and a signed letter of consent. Miss one and the refusal cites all three. Education loan sanction letters from recognised lenders also work, and unlike savings, they don't need the 28-day seasoning.

Some applicants don't need to prove funds at all: if you've held a UK visa for 12 months or more at the time of application, the maintenance requirement is waived. Most first-time students from India won't qualify, but it surprises people who did a foundation year.

We wrote at length about how financial documentation sinks otherwise strong applications in The Real Reasons Student Visas Get Rejected. The short version: officers aren't looking for wealth, they're looking for consistency.

Beyond CAS and money, the standard file for an Indian applicant contains the documents below.

The pattern across all of these: the visa file mirrors the CAS. Officers cross-check what you submit against what your university declared. Extra documents don't help. Mismatched ones hurt.

The visa application fee is £558 for applications made from 8 April 2026 onwards. It was £524 before that, so older guides underquote it.

The larger cost is the Immigration Health Surcharge at £776 per year of visa, paid upfront during the application. A student on a 16-month masters visa (course plus the standard wrap-up period) pays roughly £1,035 in IHS. Budget the two together: call it about £1,600 in government charges before you've bought a flight.

Priority processing, where available in India, costs extra on top and is worth it only in specific situations, which brings us to timing.

Standard processing is around three weeks from your biometric appointment, not from the day you submit the form online. Priority service, where offered, aims for five working days. Super priority aims for the next working day. In July and August, when every September-intake student on the planet applies at once, "around three weeks" stretches.

So work backwards from a late-September course start using the schedule below.

That timeline has slack in it deliberately. The students who end up paying for super priority in September are almost always the ones who started their 28-day clock in August.

On arrival: the UK has moved to eVisas, so you'll access your immigration status digitally through a UKVI account rather than collecting a biometric residence permit card. Set the account up before you travel; airlines and landlords increasingly check status through it.

Underneath the checklist, a caseworker is answering three questions. Is this a genuine student? Can they support themselves without working illegally? Does the paperwork hold together? The documents are just evidence for those questions, which is why a technically complete file with an inconsistent story can still fail, and why some applicants get called to a credibility interview to explain their course choice in their own words.

If your course selection, your funding story, and your stated plans line up, the interview is a formality. If your SOP says one thing and your bank statements suggest another, it isn't. We've broken down what improves your odds across every step in How to Actually Improve Your Visa Approval Odds.

One more thing worth planning around now rather than later: the post-study Graduate Route shortens from two years to 18 months for applications from 2027, which changes the job-hunting maths after your degree. The details are in our cover story on the Graduate Route change.

Get the unconditional offer early. Consolidate your funds two months out and don't touch them. Match every document to the CAS. Apply in June for September, and the three-week wait is a non-event.

The UK visa is one of the more predictable systems we work with: it's document-based, the rules are published, and refusals cluster around a small set of known mistakes. That predictability is exactly why preparation beats panic. BNPS has been filing these applications since before most current visa categories existed, and the 98.2% of our students who get approved aren't lucky. They just did the steps in order.

Course starting in 2027 and not sure your funds file holds up? A counsellor can review it before UKVI does. Talk to us.