Students With Good Academic Profiles Should Aim to Study in the UK

Perhaps the three most common questions I am asked daily are: which country offers me the best visa ratio? Where are my post-study employment opportunities highest? Where could I potentially settle down and make a life for myself and my family?

My answer is uniformly the same, each time: the UK offers Pakistani students with good academic profiles a good visa ratio, the best in Europe, as far as I’m concerned, even though the UK is no longer economically a part of it.

Post-study employment opportunities, again, in my experience, are highest in the UK especially if you already hold a bachelor’s or a master’s degree from any one of the several elite Pakistani universities (such as LUMS, LSE, NUST, or QAU) and have also secured a UK degree from a well-known and respected UK institution (such as King’s College London, LSE, SOAS, etc); and in terms of permanent settlement, regardless of what you have been seeing or hearing on social media in recent months, again, the UK comes in first place.

It may seem that I am advocating for and on behalf of the UK and British institutions, and, in a way, I am; however, I have good reason to do so.

In recent years, many of my clients have achieved bachelor’s and master’s degrees at elite British institutions, and subsequently secured contracted employment at Deloitte UK, KPMG UK, PwC UK, EY UK, HSBC, Barclays, BP, Shell UK, and Unilever UK, initially as intern consultants, following which their roles have been made permanent.

Many of them earn decent salaries, live in and around Central London, and are now well on their way to obtaining Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR). This is why the UK is, and remains, one of the top global destinations for Pakistani students with good academic profiles.

What I mean by a ‘good academic profile’ is: you have scored 70 percent or above during your matriculation and intermediate schooling, and you have secured a 70 percent or above CGPA at the undergraduate level.

For students with profiles between 60 and 70 percent, there are a multitude of excellent institutions in London, Greater London, Birmingham, Manchester, and Newcastle, and similar post-study employment opportunities during and after your PSW phase.

As an alumnus of King’s College London, where I graduated with a master’s several years ago, I would encourage students to aim to study there on any program. The lecturers, professors, and academic supervisors are in a league of their own, and you will acquire real-world experience engaging with them regularly, an experience that will benefit you both professionally and personally.

Similarly, you will gain much from studying at any elite British institution where the depth and breadth of learning are both profound and vast: it’s entirely up to you how you apply yourself. One of the key benefits of working alongside such highly qualified and experienced tutors is that they impart a sense of what it is like to be in the industry at any level, and how policy dictates what goes on in the work environment, and how you may become an instrument of change and possibly influence under those conditions.

So, if you are a candidate with a good academic profile, and if you would like to stay on to work in the UK following your stint at university, and then perhaps venture to settle there, there’s no place quite like it in terms of academic quality, academic reputation, post-study employment opportunities for highly qualified foreign candidates, and the straightforward settlement process.

In this, my first article following an extended hiatus, I have chosen to focus on the UK. Subsequent articles will explore study destinations for candidates with average academic profiles—those with scores between 55 and 65 percent at the matriculation, intermediate, or undergraduate level. Such students may also be able to study in the UK if they achieve a satisfactory overall IELTS score. I will also cover fully funded scholarships, another highly popular request from clients across Pakistan.