Before you travel to the UK

CAS Shield

As soon as you find out that your Student visa application is successful you must update CAS shield with your intended travel date and a copy of your visa decision letter. If you have any problems accessing CAS shield please email international@chester.ac.uk. You should have direct access to CAS shield yourself, not just via your agent. If you have had a CAS but do not have CAS shield downloaded on your phone please email international@chester.ac.uk urgently and request to be given direct access to CAS shield. If you fail to do this you are unlikely to enrol successfully.

When your passport has been returned to you, you must quickly start the process of setting up your UKVI account so you can get access to your eVisa. This can take some days, so start the process as a matter of urgency. Do not wait until the day you will go to the airport, and absolutely do not plan to start this after you get to the UK. If you have any problems setting up your UKVI account or getting access to your eVisa you can get support from the Home Office webchat. The webchat will not answer any other kind of visa questions. If you are an EU national, you may be given automatic access to your eVisa via the same account you used to submit the visa application.

Once you have successfully accessed your eVisa please generate new share code and add that to CAS shield. We need access to that share code before you can be enrolled.

Pre-Arrival Emails

To enrol successfully you must have direct access to CAS shield and your Welcome emails from the University of Chester. If someone has been helping you and you don’t have the log in details for CAS shield, or you haven’t had any recent emails from the University with your log in details or the Student Visa rules, please email international@chester.ac.uk and give the correct email address for us to contact you.

Before you travel to the UK you must have completed the following 3 tasks.

• Paid at least £8,000 of your tuition fees
• Booked your UK accommodation
• Updated CAS Shield with details of your travel to the UK

You should also have completed the following before you travel to the UK but in some cases it may be possible for you to complete these after you arrive

• Complete your online enrolment
• Set up your UKVI account and get access to your eVisa
• Add your eVisa share code to the “Arrival” section of CAS shield
• Downloaded the University of Chester App