#4 destination for Nepali students
United Kingdom
The best odds on this list and the fastest route through: a one-year master's, a decision usually in three weeks, and eighteen months of work afterwards. The whole health surcharge for the course is paid before the visa is issued, which catches families out.
Odds
84 in 100 applications from Nepal are granted
The grant rate for Nepal fell to 84 percent, down 14 points in a year. Still by a distance the best odds of the five, and the reason it is worth applying properly rather than cheaply.
What gets through
Files that are complete and early. The UK decides on paperwork rather than on interviews: hold the maintenance money untouched for the full 28 days, have the tuition deposit paid, get the course choice to follow from your degree, and the odds here are genuinely good. Five in six succeed, and most of the sixth failed on a detail somebody could have caught.
Of every ten who apply
2 refused, 8 granted.
Money
What it costs, in rupees
Before you fly
4.5 lakh
Tests, papers, government fees and the flight.
Must be in the bank
21.7 lakh
Nine months of maintenance held for 28 consecutive days ending no more than 31 days before you apply, plus any tuition not already paid. London is GBP 13,761. From 30 November 2026 both figures rise, to GBP 10,827 outside London and GBP 14,130 in it.
Everything, year one
50.8 lakh
Including tuition at the lower end and twelve months of living costs.
At NPR 205.50 per GBP, Nepal Rastra Bank, 2026-09-20.
Life there
What UK is actually like once you land
Wages, rent, the first job you will realistically get, and whether staying is a plan or a hope. All of it in the local currency, because that is what you will be thinking in by month two.
What you can earn
GBP 12.71 /hour
National Living Wage, age 21 and over, from April 2026. Age 18 to 20 is £10.85.
GOV.UK national minimum wage rates ↗Legal hours
20 hours a week during term for degree-level study, full time in vacations.
Which comes to, per month
GBP 1,101
Working the full legal hours at the minimum rate, before tax.
Against living costs of
GBP 1,300 /month
Work covers roughly 85 percent of living costs. The rest comes from home.
A room costs
GBP 600–900est
outside London, a room in a shared house.
London is £1,100 to £1,500 for the same room. It is the single biggest reason to look at Sheffield, Coventry, Leicester or Sunderland before you look at London.
Twenty hours at £12.71 is about £1,100 a month before tax. Outside London that covers rent and food and very little else. In London it does not cover rent. Nobody funds a UK degree on twenty hours a week, and the visa does not expect you to.
The first job
What people actually get in the first six months
- Warehouse and order picking, especially around Slough, Reading and the Midlands
- Care work, once you have a DBS check. The best paid of the realistic first jobs
- Supermarket nights and shelf-filling
- Kitchen porter and waiting, often through a Nepali-run restaurant
- Cleaning, usually early mornings before class
Who is already there
The Nepali community
1,06,730
Nepalis in United Kingdom, as of 2021.
ONS Census 2021, England and Wales, plus Scotland 2022 ↗Where. Reading, Basingstoke, Swindon and Aldershot in the south, Hounslow, Hillingdon, Ealing and Woolwich in London, and the West Midlands.
Old and settled, largely built on Gurkha families rather than students, which means functioning temples, shops and a rental network that will take you without a UK guarantor.
Afterwards
Can you stay?
Post-study work. Graduate Route, 18 months after a master's, three years after a doctorate. No job offer needed to get it.
The route to residency. Move onto a Skilled Worker visa before the Graduate Route runs out, then settle after five years on it.
The 18 months is the whole game: you need a sponsoring employer inside it. Care, health, IT and engineering sponsor readily and people from Nepal move through those routes every year. Outside them it is harder, so the lever is choosing a course that leads somewhere sponsors are hiring, and starting to apply in term one rather than after graduation. A proposal to extend settlement from five years to ten is not law yet and would change this line if it passes.
Staying is what families are really paying for, so it is the line most worth being straight about. What is above is the route and what actually moves it, and it changes on this page when the rules change.
Worth knowing before you go
The health surcharge is paid in one go, before the visa
£776 a year for the whole course, upfront. On a two-year master's that is over a lakh and a half in rupees, on top of everything else, weeks before you fly.
Twenty hours means twenty hours
It is checked against payroll records, and breaching it is the fastest way to lose a visa. Two jobs of fifteen hours each is not a loophole.
A one-year master's is genuinely one year
You arrive in September and are writing a dissertation by June. Less time to settle than Canada or Australia, and a year less tuition and rent, which is why the UK is often the cheapest of the five overall.
The best visa odds of our five countries
Five in six applications from Nepal are granted. The UK decides on documents rather than on an interview, which means a careful file is genuinely rewarded.
Requirements
What it asks for
IELTS for UKVI 6.0 to 6.5, with a minimum in each component set by the university.
Home Office maintenance, outside London: 9 months at GBP 1,171. London is GBP 1,529 a month, so GBP 13,761.
Student visa applied for outside the UK.
Immigration Health Surcharge, per year, paid upfront for the whole course. Unchanged in the April 2026 fee schedule.
Work
During study. 20 hours a week during term for degree-level study.
Afterwards. Graduate Route, 18 months for most, 3 years for a doctorate.
Work rights are what you may do once you are there. No country on this site will grant a visa on the strength of money you have not earned yet, so the first year has to be funded without them.
Intakes
When to apply
May 2027
97 days
Teaching starts May 2027. Offer in hand by 26 December 2026.
September 2027main intake
206 days
Teaching starts Sep 2027. Offer in hand by 14 April 2027.
January 2028main intake
328 days
Teaching starts Jan 2028. Offer in hand by 14 August 2027.
Before the NOC
The No Objection Certificate cannot be applied for until the offer exists. It costs NPR 2,000, is paid through ConnectIPS, eSewa or Khalti, and takes three to seven working days. Since 2024 the whole thing is online and the certificate comes back as a signed PDF with a QR code on it.
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