Mauritius Student Visa from Bangladesh 2027: Full Guide

Here is a sentence from the Mauritian government's own student visa guidelines that almost no Bangladeshi agency will read out to you: the HIV test, the Hepatitis B test and the chest X-ray are done in Mauritius, after you land — and if the result comes back positive, your entry permit is cancelled and you have two weeks to leave the country.

You will have paid the tuition by then. You will have paid the airfare. That single paragraph is the most important thing anyone can tell a Bangladeshi family about the Mauritius student visa from Bangladesh, and it sits in a public PDF that takes thirty seconds to find.

Who actually applies for a Mauritius student visa — you or the university?

The university. This is the single biggest difference between Mauritius and every other destination we write about, and it reshapes what an agent can and cannot do for you.

The official guidelines issued by Mauritius's Ministry of Home Affairs state it plainly: "Application for Student Visa should be made to the Passport and Immigration Office by the respective tertiary educational institution or TVET institution where the student is enrolled." Not by the student. Not by a consultancy in Dhaka. By the institution that has already admitted you.

That has a practical consequence worth sitting with. Before anyone can file anything, you must first hold a confirmed seat at an institution registered with the Tertiary Education Commission (for universities) or the Mauritius Qualifications Authority (for TVET colleges). Admission is not a step toward the visa — it is a precondition of the visa even existing as a possibility.

What does it cost to study in Mauritius?

We are going to quote one institution, because it publishes a full fee table on its own site rather than leaving it to agency brochures. The University of Technology, Mauritius sets out both the local and the international rate on the same page, which lets you see something most destinations hide.

Read the undergraduate row again. A Mauritian pays about Rs 22,300 a semester; an international student pays US$1,430 for the same seat. At recent rupee rates that is roughly three times as much. This is not a scandal — most countries do it — but it does mean that any figure you have been shown for "tuition in Mauritius" may quietly be the local rate.

Taken at face value, a UTM undergraduate degree costs an international student in the region of US$2,860 a year in tuition, plus a US$200 general fee and a US$10 union fee. For a Bangladeshi family that is real money but not extraordinary money — comparable to the cheaper Central Asian and Eastern European options, with the significant advantage that Mauritius teaches in English.

Do Bangladeshi students need a visa to enter Mauritius?

Yes. Bangladesh passport holders are visa-required for Mauritius — there is no visa-free entry and no arrival stamp to rely on. Mauritius also has no High Commission in Bangladesh, which means the consular side of the journey runs through its mission in New Delhi, the same New Delhi routing we have now documented for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and much of the queue.

There is a genuine ambiguity here that we would rather name than paper over. The government guideline describes the institution filing with the Passport and Immigration Office in Port Louis; Bangladeshi consultancies describe collecting your documents in Dhaka and processing through the Mauritian High Commission in India. Both can be partly true — an approval issued in Port Louis still has to become a stamp in your passport somewhere. What you should not accept is a vague answer. Ask which office issues which document, and in what order.

What medical tests does Mauritius require, and when?

This is the part that matters most, and it is worth reading twice.

The official guideline requires "a test for HIV, Hepatitis B and a chest X ray" — and specifies that these "should be done at any private medical laboratory/clinic/hospital in Mauritius", with results submitted to the Passport and Immigration Office "not later than one month after arrival." The tests are not a Dhaka formality completed before you fly. They are a condition you satisfy after you have already moved.

We are not going to tell you what to do with that information, because it is a medical matter and a personal one. What we will say is that knowing your status before you commit money is an entirely reasonable thing to do, and that any consultancy taking a non-refundable fee for a Mauritius application without mentioning this requirement has not done its job.

Can you go to Mauritius on a tourist visa and switch to a student one?

No, and Mauritius says so in capital letters. The guidelines carry a heading reading "TOURIST VISA DOES NOT ALLOW A NON-CITIZEN TO FOLLOW STUDIES/TRAINING COURSES", followed by: "Non-citizens travelling to Mauritius as tourists/visitors will not be issued any permit or extension of visas to follow studies/training courses."

Prospective students are told to travel only after the study application has been approved. This is the same trap we have now found in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan — an easy short-stay route being presented as a back door into a degree. It is not a back door in any of them.

Can international students work part-time in Mauritius?

Up to 20 hours a week — but not automatically, and this distinction gets lost constantly.

The guideline grants the right "subject to authorisation from the Ministry of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment", and the request has to go through your institution to the Permanent Secretary, with a copy to the Ministry responsible for tertiary education. In other words the work right exists, but it is an application, not a box already ticked on your permit.

What happens each year — how does renewal work?

Your permission is not granted once and forgotten. At the start of every subsequent academic year the institution must submit evidence to the Passport and Immigration Office confirming you are still pursuing the same programme. The guidelines even publish the template: a letter on institutional letterhead certifying that you sat your semester or yearly examinations and are "qualified to be upgraded to the next semester/academic year", signed and sealed by an authorising officer.

Read that as immigration status tied directly to academic progress. Fail badly enough not to progress, and the recommendation the institution is asked to make is one it cannot honestly make.

Will Mauritius accept apostilled Bangladeshi certificates?

Yes. Mauritius is a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, and it is not among the states that objected to Bangladesh's accession, which entered into force for Bangladesh on 30 March 2025. Your SSC, HSC and degree certificates can be apostilled at home rather than going through full consular legalisation — a saving in both time and money that students routinely fail to claim because nobody tells them it applies.

Is Mauritius actually a good option for a Bangladeshi student?

For the right student, yes — and the reasons are unusual enough to be worth stating clearly. Mauritius teaches in English. Its institutions are regulated by bodies that publish their registers. Tuition at a public institution like UTM sits in the low thousands of dollars. It is a small, safe, multi-ethnic country with a large population of South Asian descent, which matters more to a nineteen-year-old living abroad for the first time than any ranking table does.

Against that: no mission in Bangladesh, a visa your university must file for you, a work right you have to apply for separately, and a medical requirement with genuine teeth that is assessed only after you arrive.

What we see at Eduvisa is that students who hear "English-speaking, affordable, tropical" stop reading there. The families who do well in Mauritius are the ones who read all the way to the medical paragraph first, and plan backwards from it.

If you are weighing Mauritius against other affordable, English-friendly routes, it is worth reading our guides to South Africa and Morocco alongside this one — all three sit in the same cost tier and all three route through New Delhi.

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