Hi all, SOP plays an important role! Let me explain to you guy why SOP is very very important regardless of how strong your case is. As a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant, I also work with an ex immigration officer who was a Visa officer for 35 years with IRCC and I am sharing my experience with you guys.
Everyone wonders what happen when they submit their student visa application, right? So here is my explanation to the situation
First of all, student visa application comes under TRV (Temporary Resident Visa) category which means when an officer is going to make a decision, he or she is going to consider the following factors.
1. Purpose of visit
2. Educational credentials and IELTS
3. Financial assets
4. Ties to home country
5. Ties to Canada etc
You will be wondering why an immigration officer wants to consider ties to the home country while making a decision on student visa application, even though those immigration officers aware that these students will get a work permit and then eventually apply for PR, right?
The reason why because they still want to make sure in case if this student won't be able to get his/her PR for whatever reason, will student return back to the home country or no? otherwise, student's overstay will be a burden on Canada's economy because they will need more law enforcement officers to find those over stayed people, make sense?
if I would be at your position, my next question will be, do an immigration officer check or read SOP?
The answer is NOO, they don't read the SOP all the time. but they will read in a certain situation which I am going to explain.
When an officer, picks up a file, they will look into Educational credentials, IELTS score, course relevancy, financial assets, etc. and if everything looks good and a student is bona fide, an officer will make approval based on those documents and won't even look at the SOP.
In the following situation, an officer will look into SOP
Let's say an officer picks up a file, where a student got 52 % marks who studied Science in grade 12 and start working for 4 years and now this student wants to go to Canada and study business. If an officer is not convinced by these supporting documents and doesn't believe that this person is a bona fide student means he is not a genuine student, then he or she will read the SOP in this situation and a good detailed SOP may convince him to get you an approval.
Long story short, an officer usually read SOP when they are not sure if they are going to approve a visa based on the provided documents with the application. So, a good detailed SOP can increase the chances to get you a VISA in case officer is not convinced by the supporting documents.
I always write detailed SOP for my clients because SOP is a great way to backup your application to avoid the refusal.
Thank you,