An offshore approval rate reported in October differs from Immigration New Zealand’s broader nationality table.
Indian students planning to study in Auckland are being presented with different New Zealand visa approval figures, making the scope and dates behind each statistic essential to understanding the news.
Business Today reported on 8 October that 49.3 per cent of offshore Indian student visa applications were approved over a period running from 1 January to 13 September 2026. Its report also gave a 94.9 per cent approval rate for Chinese applicants in that reporting group.
A broader table currently published by Immigration New Zealand lists a 64.1 per cent approval rate for Indian nationals for the period to 30 September 2026. That table records 13,895 applications submitted and 12,279 decided. Unlike the media report, the table is not labelled as covering offshore applications alone.
These figures should not be treated as interchangeable. An offshore applicant group and a broader nationality group can contain different applications, while different reporting cut-off dates can also change the results. The available material does not provide enough detail to reconcile every difference between the two sets of numbers.
For readers considering an Auckland course, the distinction matters because a percentage in a headline cannot predict the outcome of an individual application. It also does not establish that a new rule caused a change in approvals.
For applicants, three questions are useful whenever a visa statistic is quoted: whose applications are included, what period is covered, and whether the percentage measures submitted applications or decisions. Comparing the same population over the same period provides a more useful picture than placing unrelated percentages side by side.
Neither source provides an Auckland-only approval rate. These are national figures relevant to prospective Indian students, including those seeking admission to Auckland institutions.
Sources
Business Today report published 8 October 2026
Immigration New Zealand student visa statistics to 30 September 2026