Australia Student Visa Requirements for Nepali Students

To get an Australian student visa, you need three things in place: a Confirmation of Enrolment (CoE) from your university, enough money for your first year and an English test result.

The visa always comes after admission. First a university accepts you and sends an offer letter, and the marks, GPA and English score it asks for are explained in our guide to the requirements to study in Australia. Once you accept the offer and pay the deposit, the university sends your CoE, and from that point you can start on the visa. If you are still at the very start of your plans, our study in Australia from Nepal guide will take you through the cost, the work rules and student life.

Keep in mind that every amount here is in Australian dollars (AUD), because that is how Home Affairs publishes them. The rupee figures are rounded to the nearest lakh so they stay useful when the rate moves, and you can check the value on any day with our AUD to Rs forex converter.

Here is what each of the three essentials means for you.

Nepali students apply for the Student visa (subclass 500), which is the visa for studying a registered course in Australia.

Home Affairs sets out every requirement on its Student visa (subclass 500) page. You may also hear about two other visas with similar names, so here is how the three differ.

You will also hear agents talk about the assessment level, or Evidence Level, of Nepal. Home Affairs gives every country and every education provider a level of 1, 2 or 3, and the level guides how much money and English evidence you attach when you apply. Home Affairs does not publish the levels, but it reviews them every March and September, and the September 2026 Evidence Level update took effect on 30 September 2026.

Agents report that Nepal is at Level 3, the highest of the three, although this is not official. What this means for you is simple: prepare a complete file from the start, because an officer can still ask for any document later. Our guide to the assessment level of Nepal for Australia explains the levels in more detail.

Here are the Australia student visa requirements, one by one.

You lodge your student visa application yourself, online through an ImmiAccount, once you hold your CoE and have bought your OSHC.

An ImmiAccount is your own account on the Home Affairs website, where you fill in the form and attach everything. From the offer letter to lodgement, plan for about 2 to 3 months, because bank, loan and sponsor documents in Nepal take time to arrange. That is why it helps to start collecting them as soon as your offer letter arrives.

The order of every step, from choosing a course to boarding your flight, and how long each one usually takes, is in our guide on how to apply for an Australia student visa. Inside the visa form itself, you do three things.

For tests taken on or after 7 August 2025, the visa asks for IELTS 6.0 or the matching score in PTE Academic or TOEFL iBT.

These are the Home Affairs minimums for the visa, and your university may ask for a higher score for your course. There are also two rules that many Nepali students miss. Your result must be less than 2 years old on the day you apply, and Home Affairs does not accept tests taken at home or online, so always book your test at a test centre. If you took your test some time ago, check its date before you pay any deposit.

Here is the score you need in each test.

You need to show enough money to cover 12 months of tuition, 12 months of living costs and your travel to Australia.

Home Affairs sets the rules for this, and they are the same for every Nepali student. The living-cost and travel amounts are fixed, while the tuition amount is the one on your offer letter. Any fees you have already paid are taken off, as long as you have a receipt or your CoE shows the payment. And if your course is shorter than 12 months, the amounts are worked out for the length of your course.

Tuition is the part that changes most from one course to another, and our cost to study in Australia page lists the usual fees by level. Here is what Home Affairs counts.

For the visa you need your passport, CoE, academic documents, English result, money documents and OSHC, plus a health examination, a police certificate and biometrics if Home Affairs asks.

You will already have most of these from your admission, so use this checklist to see what is still missing. The one rule that matters for every document is that your name and dates must be the same everywhere.

• Passport: valid for your whole course.
• CoE and offer letter from your university.
• Academic documents: your SEE and +2 certificates and transcripts, and your bachelor’s transcripts if you have a degree, with translations for anything not in English.
• English test result from the last 2 years.
• Money documents: your bank and loan documents, plus your sponsor’s income documents, a relationship certificate and a signed sponsorship letter.
• No Objection Certificate (NOC): many Nepali students need one from the Ministry of Education before money can be sent abroad for fees. Our No Objection Certificate (NOC) guide explains how to apply.
• Police certificate: Home Affairs asks for one in some cases, and our police clearance report guide shows how to get it in Nepal.
• Health examination: some applicants need one. You can check under “My Health Declarations” in your ImmiAccount, and you are allowed to have the examination before you apply.
• Biometrics: every applicant in Nepal gives a face photo and fingerprints at the Australian biometrics centre in Kathmandu, booked through VFS Global.

Book the last two with care. The Australian Embassy in Nepal says six Australian panel clinics operate in Nepal, so have your health examination only at a clinic on the Home Affairs list. For biometrics, Home Affairs gives you 14 days from the date of the request letter, so book your appointment as soon as the letter arrives.

It also helps to keep scanned copies of everything in one folder with clear file names, such as “bank-statement-sponsor”, so that you can reply quickly if Home Affairs asks for more information.

The visa fee starts at AUD 2,500, which is about Rs 2.3 lakh, and Home Affairs gives processing times only as a guide.

You pay the fee online when you lodge. Lower fees exist for some Pacific, Timor-Leste and ASEAN citizens and for students who apply only for an English course, but they do not apply to Nepali students going for a degree. Fees can change, so check the amount on the day you lodge.

On top of the visa fee, you pay separately for your OSHC, your English test, any health examination and the translation of your documents, so add these to your budget as well.

For timing, the visa processing time guide shows how long recently decided applications took, but it is not a promise for your own application. Applications usually take longer when documents are missing, names do not match or a deposit is not explained, so a complete file is the best way to avoid delays.

That is also why you should not book your flight or pay a rent deposit until you hold your grant letter. If a request for more information delays the decision, money paid early can be lost.

With a student visa you can study your course, work a limited number of hours and stay in Australia for as long as you are enrolled.

Many Nepali students plan to cover part of their living costs with a part-time job, so it is worth understanding the work limit before you arrive. The visa also comes with conditions, and your grant letter lists them. These are the three rules that matter most once you land.

Most refusals come from a weak Genuine Student case, money that is not clearly explained, or documents that do not match.

The good news is that you can avoid most of these problems if you know about them in advance. These are the patterns that most often hurt Nepali applicants:

• A large deposit made just before applying, with no explanation of where it came from, or a loan with no proof of collateral.
• GS answers copied from a sample, which say nothing about your own study and work history.
• A course with no link to your +2 stream or bachelor’s subject, and no explanation of why you are changing field.
• Family members in Australia, earlier visa refusals or study gaps that you did not mention. Home Affairs checks your immigration history, so always tell the truth.
• Altered or false documents, which can lead to a refusal and a ban on later applications.

Our guide to Australia student visa rejection reasons looks at each of these in more detail.

You can make your application stronger by answering the Genuine Student questions in your own words, backing every answer with documents and applying early.

The GS questions ask about three things: your circumstances in Nepal, why you chose this course and this university, and how the course will help you. Each answer can be up to 150 words and must be written in English. Home Affairs says answers backed by evidence carry more weight, so write every answer as something you can also prove with a document.

Useful evidence from Nepal includes:

• Your transcripts and certificates from earlier study.
• Job letters, tax returns or business documents covering the 12 months before you apply.
• Proof of your family, community and economic ties to Nepal.
• A clear reason for choosing Australia if a similar course is available in Nepal.

Our Genuine Student requirement guide walks you through each question. Beyond that, apply well before your intake so that a request for more information does not cost you your start date, and check once more that names, dates and amounts match on your passport, transcripts, citizenship certificate and bank documents.

And remember that Home Affairs says you do not need an agent to lodge your application. If you do use one, check that they are on the official register of migration agents, and never pay for “show money” arrangements or accept fake bank documents, because they can put your whole application at risk.