Step 10: International student visa applicants

If you are not a UK or Irish national, you will likely need to apply for a Student Visa if you are coming to study in the UK for more than 6 months.

To make your Student Visa application, UCL needs to provide you with a Confirmation of Acceptance of Studies (CAS) number.

Getting a CAS from UCL

For Postgraduate offer-holders, the Graduate Admissions Office provides you with your first CAS.

To be eligible to receive a CAS the following rules apply:

You must have confirmed your acceptance of your offer in your applicant portal
You must hold an unconditional offer
You must have completed the Student Visa task in your applicant portal
If you’re a postgraduate taught offer holder, you will need to have paid the tuition fee deposit or been exempt from paying it if a deposit payment is applicable to your offer. If you’re unsure, please check your offer letter.

You need to meet all three of these requirements to receive a CAS.

Once your CAS is ready, we will email you to tell you that it is available in your applicant portal. You can then apply for your Student Visa.

These are the estimated timelines you can expect for receiving your CAS:

September starters

In late Spring/Early Summer we will begin contacting everyone who:

holds an accepted offer, both conditional and unconditional
requires a Student Visa, and
has paid or been exempt from the tuition fee deposit if one applies to their offer.

This email will ask you to log into your applicant portal account and go to the ‘Student Visa’ tab.

We will ask you to confirm some relevant details to us, including your personal details (e.g. your name and passport details) and also to confirm that the information we hold about your previous study is correct.

This is so that we can make sure the information we put on your CAS is up to date and accurate.

You should only complete this stage once you are sure you have all the information you will need to go onto your CAS.

If you intend to apply for a new passport before making your visa application, please wait until you have the new passport before confirming your details.

If you confirm your details before you are sure and they are incorrect, the CAS issued to you will have the wrong information. This will cause a delay, as it takes time to fix this.

Once you have submitted this task and hold an accepted unconditional offer, you will be eligible to receive your CAS.

Your offer letter will contain a deadline by which you need to provide us with all the required documentation we need to issue you with a CAS. Documentation received after this deadline will be considered on a case by case basis and at UCL’s discretion.

Starting outside of September

If your course has a mid-year start date, we will aim to contact you three to four months before the start date of your course at UCL.

We will send you an email asking you to log in to your Applicant Portal and confirm your details to us in the Student Visa tab.

You should only complete this stage once you are sure you have all the information you will need to go onto your CAS.

If you intend to apply for a new passport before making your visa application, please wait until you have the new passport before confirming your details.

If you confirm you details before you are sure, and they are incorrect, the CAS issued to you will have the wrong information. This will cause a delay, as it takes time to fix this.