Indian Students Leveraging the Student Direct Stream (SDS) Approval Rate Advantage

The Student Direct Stream (SDS) is an expedited study permit processing program available to eligible students from 14 different countries.¹ The SDS eligibility criteria are more stringent than a regular stream application, but the data shows that students who take advantage of the SDS see an approval rate advantage over their non-SDS counterparts.

Students and their recruitment counsellors will be excited to know that new SDS data is out, and the positive trends continued in 2022 and into 2023. Because India has accounted for over 96% of all SDS applications since 2019, we’re launching the first of a two-part series delving into the trends, with today’s article focused exclusively on India.²

What’s the difference in approval rate between SDS and non-SDS applicants from India? How many Indian students are applying for a Canadian student visa through the SDS program? And do the trends differ for college and university applicants?

Stark Approval Rate Advantage for Indian Students Applying for a Canadian Study Permit Through SDS

In 2019, Indian students who applied for a Canadian student visa through the SDS program had an approval rate 41 percentage points higher than their non-SDS counterparts. This meant Indian SDS applicants were twice as likely to be approved than non-SDS applicants. How has this trend shifted since the pandemic?

The chart below compares the SDS and non-SDS approval rates for Indian students:⁴

The approval rate gap between SDS and non-SDS applicants from India has become even more stark since the pandemic. In both 2021 and 2022, SDS applicants had an approval rate three times that of their regular stream counterparts. Last year, this meant a 63% approval rate for SDS applicants and a 19% approval rate for non-SDS applicants.

And to start 2023, that difference has only gotten larger. From January to the middle of March, Indian students applying for a Canadian study permit had an approval rate of 73%. That’s seven times the 10% approval rate for non-SDS applicants over this period.

The approval rate for Indian students not applying through the SDS program has declined every year since 2018.

Indian Students Leveraging the SDS Approval Rate Advantage

The data shows a clear approval rate advantage for Indian students who apply through the SDS over those who do not. And Indian students and their recruitment counsellors are clearly aware of that advantage.

The graphic below shows the percentage of SDS and non-SDS applications from Indian students since 2018:

The majority of Indian students have been applying for a Canadian student visa through the SDS program since 2019. And the expedited processing has only become more popular since the pandemic. In 2022, 80% of Indian students applied for their study permit through the SDS. This was a whopping 23 percentage point increase over 2019, and 9 percentage points more than 2021.

The early 2023 data suggests more of the same, with 78% of Indian students applying through the SDS as of mid-March.

SDS Eligibility Criteria for Indian Students

Indian students and their counsellors not taking advantage of the SDS might find themselves asking what they have to do to meet the stream’s eligibility criteria. The full breakdown of those requirements can be found on the Canadian government’s website, but in general, SDS eligibility includes the following:

• An acceptance letter from a post-secondary designated learning institution
• A valid language test result
• A Guaranteed Investment Certificate (GIC) of at least C$10,000
• Proof of full tuition payment for the first year of study
• Recent educational transcripts
• The completion of an upfront medical examination

While the higher eligibility bar of the SDS can be difficult for students to meet, doing so helps show institutions that the student is at a lower risk of not completing their studies.

Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant (RCIC) Antonio Aragón recommends that students do everything they can to meet SDS’s eligibility requirements.

SDS Approval Rates for College and University for Indian Students

In our deep dive into the state of the Indian market earlier this year, we examined how Indian students gravitate toward college programs at Canadian institutions. What impact does SDS have on approvals by study level?

The chart below allows you to select a study level to compare its SDS and regular stream approval rates since 2018:

The college trendline almost perfectly aligns with the overall trendline. That’s because colleges accounted for about three of every four SDS applications since the pandemic. And it’s essentially the same for non-SDS applicants as well. Indeed, there were over 200,000 SDS applications and over 50,000 regular stream applications processed for the college level in 2022.

From January to mid-March 2023, Indian students applying to a Canadian college through SDS had a 76% approval rate, whereas regular stream applicants had an approval rate of 8%.

While the approval rate advantage of Indian SDS applicants to universities over their non-SDS counterparts has generally been a little less stark than at the college level, the advantage is still significant. From 2018 to 2021, 83% of SDS university applicants were approved for a student visa compared to 59% for non-SDS applicants. This was a difference of 24 percentage points.

And that difference is only growing. In 2022, the approval rate for non-SDS applicants to university dropped to 38%, and dipped again to 14% during the start of 2023. Over the same period, SDS applicants saw an approval rate of 67% and 73%. This created an approval rate difference of 29 percentage points and 59 percentage points in each respective year.

Over 47,000 Indian students submitted their university application through the SDS program in 2022.

Looking Ahead

The data shows that Indian students are taking advantage of the SDS’s expedited processing en masse, creating a substantial approval rate advantage for Indian SDS applicants.

Because of the stark difference in approval rates between SDS and non-SDS applicants, RCIC Antonio Aragón strongly recommends students do what they can to meet the SDS requirements. ApplyBoard aims to help students achieve these requirements in several ways, including the following:

• ApplyBoard recruitment counsellors can take advantage of discounted TOEFL and PTE exams to assist students in meeting their English proficiency requirement. Both exams are widely used, and now qualify for use as part of the SDS program.
• ApplyBoard’s partnership with Canada’s largest bank, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), provides students an easy and convenient way to access the International Student GIC Program for the Proof of Financial Support requirement of the SDS program.

Stay tuned to ApplyInsights, where in the coming weeks we’ll break down the SDS trends for the other 13 eligible countries in the second-part of this series, as well as have deep dives into why study permit applications get rejected.

About the ApplyInsights Team

FOOTNOTES:

1. The terms student visa and study permit are generally used interchangeably for Canadian international students. Rather than student visas, Canada provides accepted international students with study permits, which allow those students to enroll in classes at Canadian institutions. When a student is accepted for a study permit, they are also usually provided with a visitor visa, which allows that student to enter Canada for their studies. For the purposes of this article, we’ll use the terms interchangeably.

2. All data courtesy of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). Note that the latest available data is up to March 15, 2023.

3. Note that, because SDS is for post-secondary studies, all data in this article is for college, university, and other studies only.

4. It is worth reiterating here that K-12 has been omitted to better compare the SDS and non-SDS data.