Student Visa and Intake date

[instrau]

Hello, my wife is planning on starting a private college in the Jan/2019 intake in Vancouver. If we apply for the student visa right now, do you think it is possible that we could obtain it by October/2018? The college representative told us that no matter when we apply, it will only be available to us a couple weeks before the term starts, that is, in December only.
Is this true or is there any way around this? We wanted to come to Canada this October so that we could switch colleges to a part-time program in a public university, which requires a valid visa. If we had to wait until December I doubt there would be any vacancies left in the January intake for this college...
Thanks in advance.

 

[bongoman]

You need to apply to the college/university first, get admission then apply for study permit. You need to apply to colleges/universities now or probably you should have applied already, unlikely that you could get a spot for January by applying in October.
Also arriving in October while your program starts in January will raise many questions at the border as to the reason for your early arrival.
Also part time will make you ineligible for PGWP & possibly even cause problems if you need to renew your permit, so rethink this whole idea.

 

[instrau]

You need to apply to the college/university first, get admission then apply for study permit. You need to apply to colleges/universities now or probably you should have applied already, unlikely that you could get a spot for January by applying in October.
Also arriving in October while your program starts in January will raise many questions at the border as to the reason for your early arrival.
Also part time will make you ineligible for PGWP & possibly even cause problems if you need to renew your permit, so rethink this whole idea.

This particular program starts receiving applications for the January intake only in late October. Also, although it is part-time it is considered full time for PGWP and permit purposes, that is why we chose it. I see your point about arriving too early, but that is when applications open for this college. I'm afraid that if we apply later than that there won't be any vacancies left.
Do you think it is possible to obtain the study permit in October if classes start in January?