A student admitted to a May intake watched visa processing drag while the college's refund policy loomed: fees refundable (minus CAD 250) only for visa refusal and only until 5 days before classes — after commencement, the CAD 18,000 first-year fee was gone even if the visa was later refused. Members' advice:
- Set a personal decision date before the refund cutoff. The practical formula: wait until close to the refund deadline (here, end of April for a May 10 start) — some applicants were getting results in under a month — but if no decision arrives by then, defer. Don't gamble past the point where refusal means losing the year's fees.
- When processing is visibly slow, deferring is the safe call. Multiple members were blunt: 'you will never get the visa by April — go September.' Deferring costs time; not deferring risks a five-figure loss.
- The trap is the gap between visa timelines and college deadlines. The refund policy, not the visa office, is what turns a delay into a financial loss — read it before paying, and diarize the cutoff.
Historical note: this is a 2021 (COVID-era) thread when study-permit processing was severely delayed; the defer-by-the-refund-deadline logic is what carries over.