🇮🇳Study in Australia from India

Apply through the university's own international application portal, or through an agent that the university has authorised. Several universities, particularly in Western Australia, only accept applications from Indian citizens through an authorised agent. Edith Cowan University, for example, lists India among the countries that must apply via an agent. Check each university's how-to-apply page before you start.

Deadlines can fall earlier for Indian applicants. The University of Western Australia closes international applications for citizens of higher visa-scrutiny countries, India among them, several weeks before the date for other countries. Curtin closes applications 10 weeks before the course start for those countries, against 4 weeks for others. Apply three to four months ahead.

Most universities assess applications on a rolling basis and run February and July intakes. Use the universities directory to filter by state, tuition, English requirement, and intake, and check the deadline calendar for the recommended dates.

India's education-consultancy sector is large and only partly regulated, and that is where most of the fraud risk sits, not with the Australian universities themselves. In 2024, a Chandigarh-based agency, World Visa Advisors, was found to have submitted forged Confirmation of Enrolment letters and fake Department of Education certificates for hundreds of families; one Chandigarh police station alone logged nearly 400 complaints, reported losses in the first half of 2024 ran past AUD 4.5 million, and the agency's operators were arrested in July 2024 after its office was found abandoned. Before you pay anyone, confirm the agent is on your target university's own published list of authorised agents.

The Australian High Commission in India warns against a specific set of tactics: an agent who guarantees a visa outcome, one who asks you to hand over your passport or other identity documents, one who tells you that you can switch from a visitor visa to a student visa after you arrive (you cannot, and attempting it damages your immigration record), and one who charges well above the published Department of Home Affairs visa fee to 'fast-track' your application. An agent working in Australia should hold a Migration Agent Registration Number (MARN) you can check yourself on the OMARA website, and should be willing to let you see your own application through your own ImmiAccount login rather than only through theirs.

A first year in Australia costs roughly INR 27 lakh to 54 lakh for a student from India, converted from A$40,000 to A$80,000 at the rate above. Tuition is the part that moves: the rest (living costs, the visa, health cover) is fixed by the Australian Government and identical for every nationality.

Tuition runs from the low A$30,000s at regional and newer universities to the high A$40,000s and beyond at the Group of Eight. Living costs depend on the city: budget around A$30,000 a year, more in Sydney and Melbourne, less in Adelaide, Perth, and regional centres.

On top of that: the A$2,500 student visa, roughly A$500 to A$700 a year for single Overseas Student Health Cover, flights, and initial setup. See the cost-of-living breakdowns by city and the most affordable universities.

India is one of the eight eligible countries under Australia Awards Scholarships, funding full-time postgraduate study in Australia. On top of that, a couple of Australian universities run India-specific scholarships worth knowing about: Sydney's dedicated India program, and a Deakin scholarship named specifically for Indian applicants. This runs alongside the wider general international scholarships every Australian university offers (see the scholarships hub).

International students hold the subclass 500 student visa. You apply after you receive and accept an offer and the university issues a Confirmation of Enrolment. You must meet the Genuine Student requirement, which replaced the Genuine Temporary Entrant test in March 2024, and show genuine access to funds.

In January 2026 the Australian Government moved India to student-visa Evidence Level 3, the highest tier, alongside Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan. Home Affairs calculates a country's evidence level from a weighted index of visa cancellations, refusals, and overstay rates, and the rate of refusals for a fraud reason carries the single largest weight (40 percent) in that index; a score above 2.7 places a country at Level 3. Sector reporting at the time linked the move to a rise in forged bank guarantees and fraudulent academic documents detected during the November to December 2025 lodgement peak, following a Home Affairs alert the previous month about a broader rise in document fraud, including recycled passport numbers and inflated bank letters, concentrated in South Asia. You now need to provide, upfront, several months of genuine bank statements, a documented source of funds, and authenticated transcripts, and processing is slower. Check the current level when you apply, since these are reviewed.

Home Affairs does not publish one India-specific grant or refusal rate; the rate it does publish varies by quarter and by whether the decision is made in Australia or offshore, so treat any single flat percentage quoted on a consultancy website with caution. In its own figures, the grant rate for Indian applicants in the October to December 2025 quarter was 60.5 percent for decisions made in Australia and 59.5 percent for decisions made outside Australia, both down sharply from the roughly 80 percent offshore rate seen as recently as July to September 2025. Trade press citing Home Affairs data reported a comparable figure for February 2026, around 40 percent of Indian applications refused, described as the highest in more than two decades of tracking. On volume, in the 2025-26 program year to 31 December 2025, India was Australia's second largest source of student visa lodgements (34,512, up 18.2 percent on the same period the year before) and second largest by visas granted (23,665, up 5.3 percent, 13.3 percent of all grants that period), behind only China in both counts. India was, however, the largest source of Temporary Graduate (subclass 485) visa grants (26,116) and the largest single nationality among student visa holders already in Australia (88,306) as at 31 December 2025.

The common reasons Indian applications are refused: money that appears in an account only days before applying, unexplained gaps in study or work, and a course that does not build on what you have already studied. A savings history that predates your decision to apply is the strongest single signal that the funds are genuine.

Full detail on the visa itself, conditions, and family members is on the subclass 500 page.

Most bachelor’s and master’s graduates qualify for a Temporary Graduate visa (subclass 485), which gives two to three years of full work rights. That skilled work is the usual step toward permanent residence through the points-tested visas.

Check where you stand with the points calculator and track demand in the SkillSelect invitation rounds.