Already in Australia? Why China's offshore student visa grant rate is not your benchmark
The official offshore grant rate for Chinese primary applicants was 95.2% in 2025-26, but that figure covers only people applying from outside Australia.
If you are already in Australia, the headline number you may have seen, a 95.2% grant rate for Chinese primary applicants in 2025-26, does not describe your application. The official table counts only applicants who applied from outside Australia. It does not give a separate rate for people applying onshore, so it cannot tell you what your own chances are.
What the 95.2% figure measures
The Department of Home Affairs grant-rate data is filtered by three conditions: the applicant is outside Australia, the citizenship is China (People's Republic of China, excluding the SARs), and the applicant is a primary applicant. The visa grant rate for a decision cohort is calculated as granted divided by the sum of granted and refused. For 2025-26, that is 51,611 granted out of 54,197 decisions, which rounds to 95.2%.
Those conditions apply only to visa figures. They do not apply to education enrolment data, and the rate is not a personal forecast for any individual.
Offshore primary grant rates by year
| Financial year | Granted | Refused | Grant rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | 55,372 | 1,348 | 97.6% |
| 2017-18 | 57,413 | 1,763 | 97.0% |
| 2018-19 | 51,930 | 3,220 | 94.2% |
| 2019-20 | 37,943 | 727 | 98.1% |
| 2020-21 | 31,798 | 470 | 98.5% |
| 2021-22 | 37,832 | 781 | 98.0% |
| 2022-23 | 66,206 | 4,813 | 93.2% |
| 2023-24 | 68,742 | 4,018 | 94.5% |
| 2024-25 | 66,037 | 4,502 | 93.6% |
| 2025-26 | 51,611 | 2,586 | 95.2% |
| 2026-27 to 31 August 2026 (partial) | 7,700 | 657 | 92.1% |
Over the ten full years, the offshore primary rate sat between 93.2% and 98.5%. The table does not explain why it moved from year to year, so any reason you hear for a particular dip or rise is an interpretation, not something the official data states.
The last row covers only part of a year, up to 31 August 2026. A short window like this is not enough to show a trend.
Why it is not your benchmark
Three things make the offshore rate a poor guide for an onshore applicant:
- Location. The figure only includes people applying from outside Australia. An onshore application is assessed in a different context, and the official table does not break it out.
- Applicant type. The figure covers primary applicants only. If you are a secondary applicant, such as a partner or child on someone else's application, the table does not describe your case.
- Scope of time. The rate is a decision-cohort figure over a period. It does not promise that a decision in any given month will go the same way.
This is an analytical point, not a finding from the statistics. The data simply does not measure onshore outcomes.
What to do instead
These steps are our general advice, not figures from the official tables.
- Read your current visa grant notice and its conditions.
- Check your visa status through official Department of Home Affairs channels.
- Note any deadlines for reporting changes or lodging further applications.
- Before you pay any adviser, confirm their credentials and ask for the terms in writing.
If your situation involves a refusal, a cancellation, or a change of course, the relevant decision letter and its review rights are the documents to work from, not a national average.