UK Student Visa Fee and Application: Every Pound, Every Step

Three payments stand between a Bangladeshi student and a UK student visa: the application fee, the Immigration Health Surcharge, and the TB test. Students budget for the first, forget the second, and only hear about the third from a friend. The second is the big one. For a typical course, the IHS costs more than double the visa fee itself. Here is the full bill, then the application walked through step by step.

The three payments

• Student visa application fee: £524 from outside the UK, about ৳80,000 (verify on gov.uk; it rises most years)
• Immigration Health Surcharge: £776 per year of visa, paid upfront for the whole course. A 3-year visa means roughly £2,330, around ৳3.5L
• TB test at an approved Dhaka clinic (IOM): about ৳6,500 to ৳8,500

So a one-year master's costs about ৳2L in visa-adjacent fees before tuition, and a three-year bachelor's closer to ৳4.5L. The IHS does buy something real: full NHS access with no separate insurance to arrange, which is genuinely simpler than most countries' systems. But it is paid in one hit at application, and applicants who have not planned for it end up scrambling in the payment screen.

The application, step by step

Everything runs through gov.uk. You need your CAS (Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies) from the university first, and you can apply up to six months before the course starts.

• Receive your unconditional offer, pay any deposit the university requires, and get the CAS statement with its reference number
• Hold your maintenance funds untouched for 28 consecutive days: first-year tuition (minus what you already paid) plus £1,136 per month outside London or £1,483 in London, for nine months
• Book and pass the TB test at the approved clinic
• Complete the online form on gov.uk, pay the visa fee and the full IHS
• Book biometrics at VFS Global in Dhaka and attend with your documents
• Wait roughly three weeks for a standard decision, longer in the July-to-September rush

The 28-day rule, one more time

Because it refuses more Bangladeshi files than everything else combined. The full maintenance amount must sit in an acceptable account without dipping below the required line for 28 consecutive days, and the statement you submit must be dated within 31 days of your application. One withdrawal below the line resets the clock. Money in a parent's account works only with a birth certificate and a signed consent letter. Read your bank statement the way a caseworker will: coldly, line by line, looking for the one day the balance dipped.

Priority services: worth it?

VFS Dhaka sells priority processing (a decision in around five working days) for an extra fee. For students who applied early, it is wasted money. For a September starter applying in August, it can rescue the intake. The honest advice is unglamorous: apply in June or early July and the standard queue is fine.