UK Graduate visa, explained straight

What the Graduate visa is

The Graduate route lets you stay in the UK after successfully completing a degree here: 2 years for bachelor's and master's graduates, 3 years after a PhD. You can work at any skill level, be self-employed, or look for work — no sponsorship involved. It does not lead to settlement by itself; most people use it as a bridge to the Skilled Worker route once they have an offer.

The official rules live at gov.uk/graduate-visa — everything below is a plain-English explanation of them, not advice about your case.

What the Home Office requires

You are in the UK when you apply

The Graduate visa is an in-country switch only. If you have already left the UK, this route is closed — a professional would look at alternatives with you.

You currently hold a Student (or Tier 4) visa

The application is a switch from student permission — and it must be submitted before that permission expires. The date on your BRP or eVisa is the deadline.

You successfully completed the course your visa was for

The degree that your CAS was issued for, completed — a bachelor's, master's, PhD or certain other qualifications, at a licensed student sponsor.

Your university has reported your completion

Your education provider must tell the Home Office you finished before you apply. Most do it automatically after results are confirmed — but not instantly, and applying before the report lands is a refusal risk people genuinely hit.

You have not held a Graduate visa before

It is granted once. A previous Graduate (or Doctorate Extension Scheme) grant closes the route permanently.

The traps people actually hit

Waiting for the ceremony

You apply after results are confirmed and reported — graduation day is irrelevant. Waiting for the ceremony while a Student visa runs out is the classic mistake.

Assuming the university reported

The completion report is the university's act, not yours — and your application depends on it. Confirm with your student services team before you submit.

Refusals elsewhere are not fatal — but they matter

A visa refusal from another country does not automatically bar you, but your immigration history is exactly the kind of thing a regulated professional should look at before you pay an application fee.

Honesty note: nothing on this page tells you whether your own application would succeed. That judgment belongs to a regulated professional looking at your actual file — which is precisely what Compass exists to make fast and cheap.

How Compass handles it

You answer questions in a chat. No forms, no document uploads, in your own language. Around ten minutes for this route.

The engine verifies everything checkable against the versioned rules of the route — dates, course, completion report, previous grants — and traces every fact to your own words.

You see a fixed price before paying. It is computed from what genuinely needs professional judgment in your file — counted item by item, shown upfront. A clean file costs less because there is less to judge.

A regulated professional decides and signs. They talk to you in the same chat, resolve the judgment calls, and sign the assessment under their registration number. The machine never concludes on its own authority.

The Graduate visa, explained straight.