Studying in Brisbane? BYD’s registered agents and education consultant at Eight Mile Plains help with the subclass 500 student visa and course choice. Call us.
To study a full-time course in Brisbane as an international student, you’ll generally need a Student visa (subclass 500). Brisbane is one of Australia’s biggest study destinations, home to UQ, QUT, Griffith, ACU and a large number of private colleges, and the visa is what lets you enrol and live here while you study. BYD Education & Immigration Consultants helps students get both parts right, the course and the visa, from our office at Eight Mile Plains on Brisbane’s south side.
We’re a little different from a standard visa agency. Our migration work is led by a registered migration agent (MARN 1794201), and our education advice comes from a qualified education agent counsellor (QEAC O920). So your course choice and your visa are planned together, not as two separate problems.
The 500 is the visa most international students hold while studying in Australia. To get one, you’ll generally need:
A confirmed enrolment (a Confirmation of Enrolment, or CoE) from a registered Brisbane course.
To meet the Genuine Student requirement, showing you’re coming mainly to study.
Overseas Student Health Cover (OSHC) for the length of your stay.
Enough funds to cover tuition, living costs and travel.
English language ability at the level your course requires.
See our Student Visa (500) page for the full detail.
Brisbane has a genuinely strong spread of study options, and the right one depends on your goals, not just the name. The University of Queensland at St Lucia is one of the country’s top research universities. QUT runs its city campus at Gardens Point and a creative and health campus at Kelvin Grove. Griffith spreads across Nathan, Mount Gravatt and South Bank, with the Mount Gravatt campus just up the road from our office. There’s also ACU at Banyo, plus a large number of vocational and English-language colleges through the CBD.
Where you study shapes where you’ll live and how your visa evidence should read. Students often settle around St Lucia and Toowong for UQ, the inner city for the college and QUT crowd, and the south side around Sunnybank and Robertson, which has a big, well-established international-student community and is close to us. We factor all of that into a study plan that holds up.
The most common reason student visas are refused is weak evidence for the Genuine Student requirement. The department wants to see that studying is your main purpose, and that your course choice makes sense for your background and your plans. A course picked only because it’s cheap or easy to get into can actually work against you. As a qualified education consultant, we help you choose a course that genuinely fits, then build the study-plan evidence to match, which is far stronger than trying to justify a mismatch after the fact.
A lot of our student clients aren’t just thinking about the next semester. They’re thinking about staying. Study in Brisbane can lead to a Temporary Graduate visa (485), and graduate work experience can feed into skilled migration. Because we handle education and migration under one roof, we can line that up from the start, so the course you enrol in today still makes sense for where you want to be in a few years.
We help you choose the right Brisbane course and institution for your goals and budget.
We manage your enrolment and get your CoE sorted with the provider.
We prepare your student visa and your Genuine Student evidence.
We arrange your OSHC and guide you on funds and English requirements.
We plan the longer game toward a graduate or skilled visa, and we meet you at Eight Mile Plains or online.
No, but you’re welcome to, and a lot of students do. We’re at Garden City Office Park, Eight Mile Plains, near Sunnybank and the Griffith Mount Gravatt campus, with parking on site. We help students already in Brisbane in person, and students still overseas entirely online.
We work across Brisbane’s universities and colleges, including UQ, QUT, Griffith, ACU and a range of private and English-language providers. As a qualified education consultant, we help you pick the one that fits your goals, not just the easiest to enter.
Yes. Student visa holders can usually work a capped number of hours while their course is in session, and more during scheduled breaks. The current cap can change, so we’ll confirm the up-to-date limit with you.
It’s the requirement to show your main reason for coming to Australia is to study. You demonstrate it through your study plan, background and circumstances. Weak evidence here is the most common reason student visas are refused, so it’s worth getting right.
You’ll need to cover tuition, living costs and travel, and show access to sufficient funds for the visa. The figure depends on your course and living arrangements. We’ll give you a clear estimate for your situation.
Yes. Overseas Student Health Cover is mandatory for student visa holders and must cover your whole stay. Our OSHC Guide explains how it works and we’ll help you sort appropriate cover.
In many cases you can include a partner or children in your application. There are extra requirements and costs, and we’ll talk you through them.
Yes. Whether you want to change providers, extend your visa, or move toward a graduate visa, we help students already here as well as those applying from overseas.
