Data source: Department of Home Affairs, monthly study visa statistics, decisions data for the March to May 2026 window, published 2026-05-31. This is data reporting only, not migration advice.
Vietnam's offshore student visa grant rate reached 92.1% across 1,599 decided applications in the March to May 2026 window, according to the Department of Home Affairs monthly study visa statistics. The rate rose 6.3 percentage points from 85.9% in the prior December 2025 to February 2026 window.
Vietnam was the only nationality among high-volume markets to record a meaningful rise offshore in that period. High-volume markets are defined in this analysis as those with 100 or more decided applications in the window. Three smaller markets also moved upward: Mongolia gained 8.4 points across 146 decided applications, Germany gained 7.2 points across 112, and Argentina gained 3.4 points across 118.
By decided volume, Vietnam ranked sixth among offshore applicant nationalities in the March to May 2026 window. India led at 7,774 decided applications, followed by Nepal at 6,298, Bangladesh at 3,393, Kenya at 1,808, and Bhutan at 1,504. Vietnam's 1,599 decided applications placed it just ahead of Bhutan and just behind Kenya.
Declines elsewhere in the window were substantial. Zimbabwe fell 46.3 points to 43.2% across 139 decided applications. Nigeria fell 31.4 points to 52.1% across 144. The Philippines fell 26.4 points to 39.2% across 1,315. Kenya fell 25.6 points to 30.6% across 1,808. Bhutan fell 24.9 points to 50.5% across 1,504.
Kenya and Bhutan together accounted for 3,312 decided offshore applications in the window, more than twice Vietnam's 1,599. Their falls shaped the aggregate offshore picture for the period more substantially than Vietnam's rise. Zimbabwe's 46.3-point fall was more than seven times the size of Vietnam's 6.3-point rise. Nigeria fell five times as steeply, and the Philippines fell more than four times as steeply.
What drove Vietnam's improvement is not explained in the Department of Home Affairs published statistics. The monthly data records grant outcomes, not the case-level factors that produced them. The improvement may have reflected changes in cohort composition, documentation practices, institutional relationships, or departmental processing patterns in the period. The published data does not distinguish between those possibilities.
A note on methodology: the Department of Home Affairs monthly study visa statistics report decisions made in each calendar month. The grant rate in this article is calculated as the number of grants divided by all decisions (grants and refusals) decided in the March to May 2026 window. The figures cover applications decided across that three-month period, not applications lodged in it. An application lodged in an earlier month and decided between March and May 2026 is included in these totals. The rate therefore reflects the composition of the decided cohort across the window, not the behaviour of applications entering the queue during it.
The March to May 2026 window is the most recent three-month period for which the Department of Home Affairs had published study visa statistics as of the date of this article.
Individual circumstances vary. This article is general information, not migration or legal advice. For guidance on a specific application, consult a MARA registered migration agent.
Lite shows the same movement data for all 20 highest-volume nationalities in a single side-by-side table, comparing the current window to the prior one.
Sources
- Department of Home Affairs, Study visa statistics: https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/research-and-statistics/statistics/visa-statistics/study. Rolling three month window, March to May 2026. Data accessed via the StudyVisaHub production dataset.
StudyVisaHub is not a registered migration agent and does not provide immigration assistance. This article reports published Australian Government information and is general information only.