If you are looking at studying in New Zealand and cannot work out what the visa itself actually asks for, this is the plain-English version. No jargon, and every rule linked to the instruction it comes from, so you can check me.

I write a lot about what comes after the student visa. This piece is about the visa itself, because it is the front door and I have never written it down properly.

Bottom line up front: the student visa is not the difficult part. You need a place on an approved course, the money to live on, and a story an immigration officer believes. What is difficult, and what almost nobody gets right, is that the level of the qualification you enrol in decides everything that follows: whether your partner can work, whether your children go to school at domestic rates, and how long you can stay once you graduate. That decision is made at enrolment, months before anyone looks at a visa form.

Who needs one, and who does not

You need a student visa to study or train in New Zealand unless you are a citizen, a resident, or already hold a visa that allows it (Operational Manual · U2.1).

There are two exemptions worth knowing. A work visa holder can do study their employer has authorised as part of the job. And anyone on a temporary visa can study for up to three calendar months in total per twelve-month period without a student visa at all (U2.5).

That second one matters more than it sounds. A short course while you are in the country on a visitor visa is not a student visa case. A short course that turns into a year is.

What Immigration New Zealand actually asks for

The core list is shorter than most people expect. To be granted a student visa for a course longer than three months you need an offer of a place at an approved provider, tuition fees paid or formally waived, insurance unless you are a PhD student or on a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade scholarship, and accommodation arrangements if you are under 18 (U3.1).

On top of that sit the requirements every temporary visa carries: health and character, a properly lodged application, and being what the instructions call a bona fide applicant.

Then the money. For a course of 36 weeks or longer at tertiary level, you have to show NZ$20,000 a year available to maintain yourself, less anything you have already prepaid for living costs. For a shorter course it is NZ$1,667 a month (U3.20.30). That is on top of your tuition, not instead of it.

Those funds can be your own, or covered by a sponsor or a formal financial undertaking from a relative or a friend. If someone else is funding you, the officer looks at whether they genuinely hold the money and genuinely intend to hand it over, not just whether a bank statement exists.

The genuine intent test, and why applications fail it

This is the part that decides most refusals, and it is not on any checklist.

A bona fide applicant is someone who genuinely intends a temporary stay for a lawful purpose, and who in the officer’s opinion is not likely to stay unlawfully, breach their visa conditions, or be unable to leave (E5.1).

Read the second half of that again. It is an opinion about your future behaviour, formed from your history, your course, your finances and your explanation. And meeting every listed requirement does not entitle you to the visa: granting a temporary visa is discretionary, and nobody has a right to one (E5.5).

In practice, cases come apart on incoherence rather than on dishonesty. A senior engineer enrolling in a level 4 business certificate. A 38-year-old taking a foundation diploma. A course in a city with no industry attached to it. None of those are lies. They just do not add up, and the officer is trained to notice when a story does not add up.

The fix is never a better personal statement. The fix is a course your own history already explains.

How much you can actually work: 25 hours, not 20

Almost every guide still says 20 hours a week. It has been 25 since 3 November 2025.

A student visa may carry conditions allowing work of up to 25 hours in any given week if you are studying full time on a programme of at least two academic years, or a full-time programme leading to a qualification at level 4 or above, among a few other routes (U13.15.1). Micro-credentials do not count as qualifications for this, even when they appear on the framework.

Three more things sit alongside it:

  • Full time during scheduled vacations, if your programme runs at least one academic year. There is a separate provision for the Christmas and New Year summer vacation for courses covering at least two semesters over eight months or more.
  • Unlimited hours if you are doing a masters by research or a doctorate at a New Zealand tertiary institution. This is the quiet advantage of a research degree and it is rarely mentioned.
  • No self-employment. A student visa with work conditions does not let you work for yourself, and you have to be 16 or over to have work rights at all (U13.1).

Twenty-five hours at a real wage is not a living. It is the difference between a plan that survives a hard year and one that does not.

The conditions you are agreeing to

Every student visa carries the same standing conditions: keep the means to maintain yourself and to leave the country, attend your programme, make satisfactory academic progress as your provider judges it, pay your fees, and hold insurance if you are required to (E3.20).

Satisfactory progress is the one people trip over. It is assessed by the education provider against its own academic policies, not by Immigration New Zealand, and a provider reporting poor progress is the start of a problem rather than an academic footnote.

The number that decides what your visa is worth

Here is the part I would put on the first page if I could.

Level 9 or 10, a master’s or a doctorate in any subject, lets your partner apply for a work visa with open conditions for the same period. No list to check, no occupation test. A level 7 or 8 qualification only does the same if that specific qualification is named on the post-study work list or the Green List (WF4.1, and the list itself at Appendix 13).

Same campus, same subject, one year apart in level, and a completely different outcome for the household.

The children work the other way round from what people assume. A student visa holder generally cannot support their own children’s student visas. The exceptions are narrow: an approved exchange programme, a PhD at a New Zealand university, or an MFAT scholarship (U8.25). In most families the children attach to the working partner instead, which is also what makes them domestic students at a state school (U3.35).

So in a couple, the question is not only what to study. It is which of you studies. I have seen that single decision be worth more than any saving on tuition.

What happens when you finish

A post-study work visa is the usual next step, and its length is set by what you completed.

A level 9 or 10 qualification studied full time for at least 30 weeks carries three years, usable for any work in any occupation. A level 7 bachelor’s degree or a level 8 qualification carries the time you actually spent studying it in New Zealand, which is usually one year rather than three (WD3.5).

Apply within three months of your student visa’s end date, or six months if you did a doctorate, and hold NZ$5,000 to support yourself (WD3.1). No job offer is needed. And you get one in a lifetime, so it is not a card to spend on the wrong qualification.

What changes on 16 November 2026

Two things, both published and both worth planning around.

A new Short-term Graduate work visa arrives for qualifications at level 5 to 7 that are studied full time for at least 24 weeks and are not eligible for a post-study work visa. It comes with a real catch: its holders cannot support a partner for a work visa or a child for a Dependent Child Student Visa. For a household, that is the difference between a plan and a dead end.

The post-study work visa also extends to a level 7 Graduate Diploma completed in New Zealand where the graduate also holds a bachelor’s degree, earned here or overseas (Amendment Circular 2026-24).

What I would actually do

Work backwards, and be honest about which of you is studying.

Start from the end, not the enrolment. Decide what you want to be doing in five years, in which city, in what job. Then pick the qualification that makes that job reachable, and only then look at the visa. Every case I have seen go wrong went wrong in the other order.

If you are moving as a household, treat level 9 as the floor. A master’s in any subject gives your partner an open work visa, and their work visa is what puts your children in a state school at domestic rates. A level 7 or 8 qualification can do the same, but only if it is named on Appendix 13, and you should check that before you pay a deposit rather than after.

Price the whole year, not the tuition. Twenty thousand dollars of living costs, tuition, insurance, flights, and a working partner who may take three months to find something. The families who struggle are almost never the ones who were short on fees.

Do not enrol in something you would not have chosen anyway. The genuine intent test is a coherence test, and a course picked to satisfy it is exactly the kind of course that fails it.

Check the level, twice. It is one line on an offer of place, it takes ten seconds to read, and it decides more than anything else on the page.

If you want me to look at a specific course against a specific household, send me both and I will tell you what that enrolment actually buys.

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