In the last 3 weeks, I’ve had 4 tech bros with over 4 years of experience relocating to the UK through the study visa route.
Unless you genuinely want to do your master's, you have no business stressing yourself unnecessarily. You literally have a visa route that allows you to relocate easily, it is more affordable and flexible, start a business if you want to or get a job, allows you to travel as much as you want to, gives you unlimited time to work, exposes you to a network of top tech talents in the world and from Nigeria, access to top tier information to live your best life in the UK and a sure access to citizenship in 3-5 years.
The biggest hack is to work with a consultant in this field who has a high success rate of helping talents land their endorsements.
Let me break this down in the simplest way possible. Before I go ahead, this information is specifically for individuals in TECH, FASHION, MUSIC, MOVIE, and VIDEOGRAPHY who have worked in any of these fields for at least 5 years.
Going through school seems to be the easiest route but it is the most stressful. Stressful in the sense that you’ll be saddled with going to class, assignments and your dissertation (if this is your thing, please do you). You also have huge school fees to pay and you are constantly thinking of where to get a job with the 20hrs/week limit. This is why many do menial jobs or care work (respectfully speaking).
Now even after school, you begin to think of either another visa type, looking for sponsorship jobs, or switching to the post-study visa which comes with its own headache.
Let’s do a quick mathematics here:
School fees - £20,000
Visa - £490
IHS (one year)- £624
Post-study application - £822
PSW IHS (2 years) - £1248
Work - 20hrs
Total: £23,184 (this excludes flight and this is the fee for one person).
However, with the global talent visa route (say you get the exceptional talent endorsement which is 3 years) this is what the mathematics will be:
This is for 5 years:
The thing about the global talent visa route is that if you don’t even have the money to pay for the whole 3 or 5 years; you can pay for one year and then extend your visa when it is near expiry. So let’s say you even pay for 1 year only (though I will advise against this because extending comes with its own stress, however, it is not impossible), this is what the figures look like:
My point here is, that while there is the japa wave, please seek information. So what is the next step? You have to check if you are eligible and I highly recommend using this tool: check.traavu.com, you proceed to get smart suggestions that tell you what to do to improve your application. There are tons of free resources too on the self-help portal. This is especially true for those who don’t have the cash or need to continue working to qualify.
Another thing worthy of note is that if you are looking to leave by February 2024, you should have started putting all your evidence together by now. The process is a very tedious one. You can’t wake up one morning to apply, it doesn’t work that way.
I hope this has helped one person today. If you have questions, please feel free to join the community on WhatsApp and we will be glad to answer all your questions.
PS: Please note that the costs above excludes tuberculosis test and flight fares.