Study in UK: What It Costs, What the Visa Needs, and When to Apply

Uttara R

27/08/2026

13 min read

Deciding to study in the UK is, in financial terms, a commitment of somewhere between one and three years and a sum most families will feel. What you are buying is a degree, a period of legal residence, and a window in which to compete for work. Whether that turns out to be a good purchase depends far less on which university name ends up on the certificate than on whether the numbers were right at the point you committed.

This guide is the mechanical half of that decision: what the Home Office actually requires, what the money has to look like and for how long, what the whole thing costs once the charges nobody advertises are added in, and when each step has to happen. It is deliberately not a persuasion piece.

Every Home Office figure below was read from GOV.UK on 27 August 2026 and is stated with the page it came from. These are precisely the numbers that move — maintenance rose in November 2025 and the post-study work route changes on 1 January 2027 — so check the same pages before you apply rather than trusting any guide, including this one, to still be current when you read it.

What does the UK actually require of you?

Five conditions, and they have to hold at the same time. Missing any one of them is fatal to the application regardless of how strong the rest of your file is.

• An offer from a licensed student sponsor, evidenced by a Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies — the CAS.
• Enough money for your first year of tuition plus living costs, held in an acceptable form for an acceptable length of time.
• English at the level your course and the immigration rules require, which are two different standards.
• A tuberculosis test certificate if you are applying from one of the specified countries, India among them.
• No immigration history that engages the general grounds for refusal — deception in a previous application being the serious one.

For applicants from India and South Asia, the failure that recurs is not an academic one. It is money: either not enough of it, or the right amount documented in a way the rules do not accept. Start assembling financial evidence three to four months before you expect your CAS, not after it arrives.

How much money do you have to show, and for how long?

First-year tuition plus living costs. The living-cost figures are set by the Home Office, not by your university, and they do not vary by city beyond a single London boundary. GOV.UK states:

These replaced £1,334 and £1,023 for applications made from 11 November 2025. A great deal of guidance still in circulation quotes the older pair. If you find a checklist that does, it predates the change and nothing else on it should be trusted either.

The money must be held for 28 consecutive days, and the closing balance must be dated within 31 days of the date you apply. It is the twenty-eight days that catches people out: a balance that dips below the required level on day nineteen resets the count to zero. Open the window deliberately, and do not move money in or out while it is running.

One thing worth saying plainly, because no maintenance figure says it for you: this is a threshold for granting a visa, not a budget. It is the amount at which the Home Office is satisfied you will not become destitute. It is not the amount you will spend.

What does it cost in total?

Four separate lines, and only the first is the one people plan for.

The surcharge detail matters more than it looks. A one-year master’s is normally granted a visa running several months either side of the course, so you are commonly charged for two years rather than one. Budget roughly £2,100 for the fee and surcharge together and you will not be caught short.

On tuition, treat every published range with suspicion and go to the institution. As a worked example of what a real fee page looks like, Sheffield Hallam publishes £18,000 a year for international undergraduates and £18,600 to £21,375 for a taught postgraduate course — note that the postgraduate figure is for the whole course rather than per year, which is exactly the kind of distinction an aggregator flattens and gets wrong. Fees at the research-intensive universities run substantially higher, and a laboratory or clinical subject higher again.

For a fuller treatment of the visa arithmetic on its own, including the refusal reasons and what to do if a decision goes against you, see our complete guide to UK student visas.

Which English tests are accepted?

Two standards operate at once and they are frequently confused, which produces the specific unpleasant surprise of a student who satisfies the university and not the Home Office.

• University admission requirements are set by the institution. IELTS Academic, PTE Academic and TOEFL iBT are widely accepted, and many providers accept the Duolingo English Test.
• Visa English evidence is set by the immigration rules. For degree-level study the provider can usually assess your English itself, but for a course below degree level a Secure English Language Test from an approved provider is required.

For competitive taught master’s programmes, target IELTS 6.5 overall with no component below 6.0, or the equivalent. Some courses in law, healthcare, journalism, education and psychology set 7.0. Check the specific course page rather than a university-wide statement, because the variation within one institution is often wider than the variation between institutions.

What documents will you need?

Assemble these as a single labelled set before you start the application rather than hunting for them during it.

• A valid passport with adequate remaining validity.
• Your CAS statement, with every field checked — course title, start and end dates, the tuition figure, any payments already recorded, and whether ATAS clearance applies.
• Financial evidence: bank statements covering the full 28-day window, or an education loan sanction letter from an accepted lender.
• Tuition receipts for anything already paid, which reduces the amount you must evidence.
• Academic transcripts and degree certificates.
• An English test report where one is required for the visa.
• A TB test certificate from an approved clinic where applicable.
• Parental consent documents for applicants under 18.

The single most productive hour you can spend is checking that these documents agree with each other. A name spelled two ways, a date of birth that differs between the passport and the transcript, or a tuition figure on the CAS that does not match the receipt — each of these is a refusal reason in its own right, and each is entirely avoidable.

How do you find accommodation you can actually afford?

Four options, and the cost gap between them is wide enough to change your total by several thousand pounds a year.

• University halls — the safest first-year choice, usually with bills included and a contract that matches the academic year.
• Private purpose-built halls — more modern, generally more expensive, and often let on 51-week contracts you will pay for over the summer whether or not you are there.
• Shared houses and flats — the cheapest route by a clear margin outside London, and the one that requires you to have people to share with.
• Homestay — workable for a first term while you find something longer-term.

Before signing anything: ask for a video walkthrough rather than relying on photographs, confirm the contract length and exactly which bills are included, and check that the property is registered where the city requires it. Full-time students are generally exempt from council tax, but the exemption has to be claimed and a household with one non-student in it loses part of the benefit.

Where you study drives this more than any other decision. Our guide to the best UK cities for international students compares them on cost as well as reputation, and the London colleges guide covers the case where the premium is worth paying.

When should each step happen?

The application year is longer than most people expect, and the expensive mistakes are all timing mistakes.

You can apply for the visa at the earliest six months before your course start date from outside the UK, and three months from inside it. A decision usually takes three weeks from outside the UK and eight weeks from inside, per GOV.UK. July to September is the busiest period and the three-week guide stretches, which is the argument for applying in June even though you technically could wait.

For master’s courses with rolling admissions — which is most of them — applying early is not merely tidier. Scholarship consideration and the more popular course places both go before the stated deadline.

What are the admission requirements?

They vary by tier and by subject far more than by country, so the useful question is not “what does the UK require” but “what does this course require”.

For a taught master’s, the common shape is a three- or four-year bachelor’s degree in a relevant subject at somewhere between 55% and 70% depending on the university and the course, English proficiency, and for some programmes a period of work experience. MBAs are the exception that genuinely requires several years of it.

For undergraduate entry through UCAS, expect Class 12 results in the 70% to 90% band depending on the institution, subject prerequisites where the course demands them, a personal statement and an academic reference.

Two things are worth knowing about how UK admissions actually reads an Indian file. Backlogs are assessed rather than counted — many universities are relaxed about a small number while weighting your final-year performance heavily. And whether your bachelor’s is three or four years determines eligibility for some courses before anything else in your application is considered, so establish that first. If you want a realistic sense of where your profile sits, our note on profiles that work for UK universities is the place to start, and the ranked universities guide covers how to read a league table without being misled by it.

Can you work while you study?

Usually yes, within limits that are printed on your own visa rather than described in general terms anywhere. GOV.UK says only that how much you can work depends on what you are studying and whether it is term time.

In practice, students on a course at degree level or above are commonly permitted up to 20 hours a week during term, and may work full time outside term time — which includes vacations, the period before the course starts, and after it has ended. A useful detail that trips people up: a week means any seven-day period starting on a Monday, so two shifts either side of a weekend can breach the limit even when no calendar week looks over.

What is prohibited is a shorter list and a more serious one. You cannot be self-employed, which rules out freelancing, contracting and running a business — the rule that catches students planning design, development or consulting work on the side. You cannot claim public funds. And you cannot work as a professional sportsperson or sports coach.

Treat any earnings as support for living costs. Never build them into a tuition plan: the visa requires you to evidence the money upfront precisely because part-time work is not accepted as a funding source.

How long can you stay after you graduate?

This is the part of the calculation that changed, and a great deal of guidance has not caught up.

The Graduate visa is not a flat two years. GOV.UK states that it lasts:

Work out which band you fall into before you choose an intake, because it is decided by your application date rather than your start date. A one-year master’s beginning in September 2026 finishes in late 2027, so the graduate applies in the 18-month band. The route costs £937 to apply for, plus the health surcharge at the standard rate, and it does not require employer sponsorship — but it also does not lead to settlement by itself. It is a bridge to a sponsored route such as Skilled Worker, and a shorter bridge than it was.

What scholarships are realistically available?

Partial awards are common; full awards are rare and heavily oversubscribed. Plan your funding as though you will not get one, and treat any award you do win as reducing a cost you had already covered.

• University merit awards — often automatic against academic thresholds, typically a few thousand pounds off tuition.
• Country-specific awards for Indian students, offered by many institutions and usually competitive rather than automatic.
• GREAT Scholarships — for 2026-27, British Council India lists 12 postgraduate scholarships for Indian students, each worth a minimum of £10,000 towards tuition on a one-year postgraduate course.
• Chevening and Commonwealth — the fully funded government schemes, applied for separately and on their own timelines.

The strategy that actually improves your odds is unglamorous: shortlist universities where your profile would sit in the upper part of their admitted range rather than at the bottom of a more prestigious one. Our guides to UK scholarships and the Chevening scholarship cover the application mechanics in detail.

What should you do next?

Work in this order, because each step constrains the one after it. Establish your realistic academic tier before you build a shortlist. Build the full cost model — tuition, the £558 fee, the surcharge, the maintenance minimum and a realistic living budget above it — before you fall for a university. Confirm what tests your specific shortlist requires before you book any of them. Then open the funds window early enough that a bank delay is not a crisis.

If you would rather do that against real admit data than assumptions, get your profile assessed and a UK shortlist built around it before you commit either the application fees or the year.