Starting from 1st January 2025, all students that intend to apply for a Student Visa to study in Australia must include a Confirmation of Enrolment (COE) of their intended study. Supplying only a Letter of Offer will no longer be sufficient for a Student Visa application. Doing so would cause the application to become invalid. For onshore applicants, this may lead to potential risks of exceeding your current visa’s expiry date if you start your course application too late. With this new policy, it is advisable to start an application to an institution at least one month before your current visa expires to ensure you have sufficient time to secure a COE for the Student Visa application.
In relation to this, recent amendments to the legislation have led to the introduction of Ministerial Direction 111 (MD111) which now replaces the previously implemented Ministerial Direction 107 (MD107). While the proposal of International Student Caps has not yet been implemented, it is important to note that education providers still have their own enrolment thresholds due to the maximum capacity of students they can accommodate for their courses.
MD111 only applies to Offshore Student applications. The policy is such that students who apply to education providers that have yet to reach 80% of their enrolment threshold will experience faster processing times for their Student Visa application. Visa applications done once that threshold has exceeded will still be processed but not given as much priority. As such, it is best if students have all of their necessary documents ready for lodging their Student Visa application to ensure a smoother and faster processing time which would minimize the chances of the visa outcome being finalized pass the start date of their intended study.