If you are not a British or Irish national, then you will need to hold a form of immigration permission (visa) that provides you with a right to study in the UK in order to begin your course at Royal Holloway.

Most international students use the student visa route to enter the UK and study a course with us and if you will be using this form of immigration permission, we recommend you read our detailed guidance on how to apply for a student visa.

If you are applying for a student visa it’s important that you wait for the visa to be granted before you travel to the UK. If you travel before your student visa is granted it is likely that you will enter the UK as a visitor and you will not have a right to study. In this instance, you’d be required to leave the UK before you can start your course.

Other types of UK visa also provide a right to study in the UK. If you are already in the UK and hold a different type of visa, we recommend that you check with our International Advice Team whether you can study using this type of visa. 

If you are applying for a student visa, you will need the University to issue you a CAS before you make your application.

You must have completed the following steps in order to receive your CAS:

• Accepted an unconditional offer from Royal Holloway
• Paid any relevant deposit amount
• Uploaded any documents or information in support of being issued a CAS via the Applicant Portal
• Where applicable have attended a pre-CAS interview and submitted supporting documentation*

 *Only applicants from certain regions will be asked to do this.

If you are coming to the UK to study a course that is longer than 6 months and if you are not a national from an EEA country then you will be provided with a Biometric Residence Permit (BRP) which acts as your ‘visa’ for the duration of your course.

Please note that if you made your student visa application outside of the UK, you will only receive your BRP when you arrive in the UK.

During the student visa application process, you will be asked where you want to collect your visa. We recommend that students have their BRP delivered to the University’s Alternative Collection Location (ACL) on our Egham campus

I’m collecting it from the University’s Alternative Collection Location in Egham

You’ll be able to collect your BRP while you complete your Identity Check and enrolment. Please see below for a list of documents that you will need to bring to complete your enrolment and collect your BRP.

I’m collecting it from a Post Office

You will need to collect your BRP before you come to complete enrolment (see below).

When you visit the Post Office you must take:

• Your passport
• Your Biometric Resident Permit (BRP) collection letter – you will have received this when you received a decision on your visa application.
• Confirmation of your UK address – you do not need to provide a document to prove this, but you must be able to tell the Post Office staff your address in the UK
• If you’re under 18 years of age, you will need to nominate an adult to collect your BRP on your behalf. If you are unable to do so, please contact International Advice

If you hold a student visa, then you will need to bring documents with you when you do your in-person Identity Check to complete enrolment.

The documents you need to bring will depend on your nationality and how you applied for your student visa.

Students with an Entry Clearance Vignette in their passport

If you made your student visa application outside the UK, this is the yellow sticker that will be in your passport with the entry date stamp from when you have travelled.

You’ll need to provide the following:

• Your passport
• Your Biometric Resident Permit (BRP) collection letter – This letter confirms where you can collect your BRP card.
• Your Biometric Resident Permit (BRP) card – You will only receive this once you are in the UK. See above for ‘where can I collect my BRP?
• Evidence of the date that you entered the UK – if you don’t have a stamp in your passport, please bring evidence of your flight details or boarding pass
• Your UK Visas & Immigration decision letter, which shows the start and end date of the permission granted.  (This is because BRP cards can only be issued by UKVI with a valid until date as at 31/12/2024, to update your leave granted correctly you will need to provide the letter/email).

Students with digital immigration permission

If you are an EEA national and you used the UK Immigration ID check app on your smart phone to make your student visa application then you won’t receive an entry clearance vignette or a BRP. Instead, you will hold digital immigration permission.

You’ll need to bring:

• Your passport
• A Digital immigration status share code - To generate a share code please go to ‘View and Prove Your Immigration Status’ at www.gov.uk/view-prove-immigration-status  and follow the instructions from the ‘Start Now’ button at the bottom of the page.
• Evidence of the date that you entered the UK – if you don’t have a stamp in your passport, please bring evidence of your flight details or boarding pass.

Students who applied to extend their student visa or switch from inside the UK

If you were already in the UK on a valid student visa for a previous course and you’ve ‘extended’ your student visa to cover your new course at Royal Holloway or you held a form of immigration permission that allowed you to ‘switch’ to the student visa from inside the UK then you will need to provide:

• Your passport
• Your Biometric Resident Permit (BRP) card (or a digital immigration status share code if you don’t have a BRP) obtained using the CAS that Royal Holloway issued you for the course you are enrolling on.

If you’ve made an application to extend your student visa but you haven’t yet received a decision on that application, we will be able to let you enrol with evidence that you submitted an ‘in-time’ valid application for leave to remain in the UK.

If you’ve made an application to switch to the student visa but you haven’t yet received a decision on that application, we will be able to let you enrol with evidence that you submitted an ‘in-time’ valid application for leave to remain in the UK. You will also need to show that the visa that you are switching from, gives you a right to study. Please note that not all UK visas provide a right to study including the Graduate visa. If you are switching from the Graduate visa (or another visa that doesn’t provide a right to study), you will not be able to complete your enrolment until you are granted the student visa.

Our International Advice Team can help you gather evidence that you have made a valid application to extend or switch your visa and we strongly advise any student planning to apply for their new student visa from inside the UK to seek advice from them before submitting their application. 

If you are not a UK or Irish passport holder and you don't have a student visa, then you will need to provide evidence of your immigration status and our Student Administration Team will need to be satisfied that this immigration type provides you with a right to study in the UK.

All students will need to provide their passport.

Depending on your nationality and the type of immigration permission you hold you will also need to provide:

• Your Biometric Residence Permit (BRP)

or

• A Digital immigration status share code - To generate a share code please go to ‘View and Prove Your Immigration Status’ at www.gov.uk/view-prove-immigration-status  and follow the instructions from the ‘Start Now’ button at the bottom of the page.

or

• Evidence of the date that you entered the UK – if you don’t have a stamp in your passport, please bring evidence of your flight details.

If one of your nationalities is British or Irish, then you should enrol using evidence of this.

Otherwise, international students should enrol using the nationality under which they were granted immigration permission to study in the UK i.e. the passport you used to make your visa application.

We are pleased to offer a free airport collection service for our new international students flying into London Heathrow (LHR) airport to our Egham campus.

For students starting their course in September 2023, this service is available on:

• Wednesday, 13 September 2023
• Saturday, 16 September 2023 
• Sunday, 17 September 2023

 The deadlines to book your airport pick-up are:

• 8am (BST) 31 August 2023 for airport pick-up on 13 September 
• 8am (BST) 8 September 2023 for airport pick-up on 16 and 17 September

The International Advice team will also be running a New to the UK programme from 13 September - 15 September 2023. This is a special programme of free events for international students to help you feel welcomed and settle into life here in the UK before you begin your studies.  

To find out more, read our terms and conditions and to book your airport pick-up and place on our New to the UK programme, please visit our website.