The student visa assessment program has five different assessment levels for the students willing to pursue their higher education abroad. All the student visa requirements needs to be fulfilled by the applicants from any country to study in Australia in the particular education division. Assessment level 1 denotes the lowest assessment level and 5 the highest assessment level. If the level of assessment is higher, student needs to provide more evidences an applicant is required to provide to support the claim for the grant of student visa. The individual potential students are considered by the department for the student visa application. Assessment levels justify the process for student visa and allows the departments to offer quick and efficient services to the students by balancing the veracity of Australia’s immigration program.
The visa requirements and steady decisions are very important part of the student visa program as visas are granted to students from different countries based on the assessment levels. The assessment levels play an important role to tackle the immigration risk for each of the student groups. It helps in determining visa requirements and enable uniformity in the decisions across the diverse range of visa applicants. The Australian student visas are granted to the students who can meet the assessment level requirements i.e. the passport held by the student visa applicant and the visa subclass the student visa applicant is applying for. The level of assessment helps in understanding how likely a student will fulfil with the conditions of an Australian Student Visa.

If the student’s passport is not listed, students will be subjected to assessment level 3 or if they supported by the AusAID or Defence and are students are applying for a Subclass 576 - AusAID or Defense student visa will be subject to Assessment Level 2. As every country is allotted an assessment level, to recognize the evaluation level of a particular country the department studies the requirements of the group with their visa requirements and other aspects of their immigration risk in the earlier year. When group has a higher level of immigration risk over a given period, the department reacts to this preference by rising the assessment level for that group. With this raise in the assessment level the applicant needs to produce a higher level of proof to support their claims as they wish to study in Australia. When all the visa requirements are fulfilled by the student, the immigration risk is lower and this also lowers the assessment levels and hence the student has to provide less evidences to support their claims for a student visa application. The department often conducts risk assessment of the student visa cases and revises the assessment levels to ensure that they are aligned to the group of immigration risks.
The passport of the student and the course they want to study in abroad are the two things that helps in determining the students’ assessment level for their visa application. Students need to match the passport type with the subclass of the visa for the education division of the program they want to study. The highest assessment level is 5 and the lowest level of assessment is 1 for the students. Students that are eligible for the Bachelor’s, Masters and Doctorate degree programs, need to provide the proof of confirmation of enrolment (COE) for a course from the college at the time of the application process. Students fulfilling all the requirements are treated as the lower migration risk sets similar to the assessment level 1.
The various types of student visas and subclasses are based on the education division of the main program of the student. 570 - Independent ELICOS, 571 - Schools, 572 - Vocational Education and Training, 573 - Higher Education, 574 - Postgraduate Research, 575 - Non-Award, 576 - AusAID or Defence. The assessment level 2 comprises of the students seeking subclass 576 i.e. AusAID or Defence sponsored and for students who do not have the postgraduate research program listed in the Subclass 574 considered under assessment level 2. The programs with the subclass such as 570 - Independent ELICOS, 571 - Schools, 572 - Vocational Education and Training, 573 - Higher Education and 575 - Non-Award comes under the assessment level 3.