Why should you choose a reliable education agent?
Education agent is a person or organisation (in or outside Australia) who recruits overseas students and refers them to education providers. In doing so, the education agent may provide education counseling to overseas students as well as marketing and promotion services to education providers.
Education agents are not only the one who assist you to find the institution where you wish to study, the country and the visa process but also may be career adviser for you. There are number of reasons why a student or a family member seeks help from education agent. This could range from early stage of choosing the right institution to o settle down in the desired country. Obviously, there is no doubt, that there are 1000s of education agents in your country but who should you choose? What criteria to be used to ensure that you get the right advice to match your needs? The one who guarantee you the visa or who provides you true and honest information?
There is also no doubt there are many dubious agents who seek to take advantage of vulnerable student. Obviously, many agent’s primary goal is to place you in an institution where they can get maximum commission. Those commercially oriented agents’ focus is to benefit themselves rather than the care about your future. This is really a sad and shameful for those unethical agents who are flourishing in the education marketplace. In the same note, not all the agents are same. There are agents who are ethical whose primary goal is to provide the right solution especially with a student-centered approach. Agents are helpful and makes the entire process so easy for you because they have expertise in institution application process, visa process and most likely will be able to assist you to find the accommodation and some other support in your destination country when you don’t know anyone. But not every agent can do.
Therefore, it is very important to choose the reliable agent who provides you the right services with right information and support to get you through the process, not the one who guarantees you the visa because they are not the visa decision makers as no one can give such a guarantee.
Use the following tips for choosing the right agent for yourself or any other study abroad applicant of yours.
1. Check if they are registered business in your home country.
2. Check if the agent has contract with the institution you want to study. By law, all institution will have authorized and registered agents. There may be more than one agent for the same institution in your location.
3. Ask for any service fees that may be charged by the agent, must ask them to put it in writing.
4. Try to send money direct to institution, try avoiding payments through the agent.
5. Ask your elder or parents to assist you in choosing the right agent.
6. Any promises or guarantee such as guaranteed student visa, permanent visa after completion of the course, guaranteed job, sponsorship etc. sounds too good to be true and you must be careful.
7. Look for the agent who has local support in the destination country.
