Choosing an agency, the criteria that matter.

Are there agencies approved by the Belgian State or by the universities?

No. No Belgian authority issues an approval, a licence or a label to the agencies that support international students. As of 7 September 2026, neither ARES (the Académie de recherche et d'enseignement supérieur, the academy for higher education and research), nor the Office des étrangers (Immigration Office), nor the SPF Affaires étrangères (Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs), nor any university publishes a list of recognised, partner or accredited agencies. A support agency is a private company like any other, subject to commercial law and consumer law, nothing more, nothing less.

The consequence is simple: nobody has vetted for you the seriousness of the agency you are contacting. No third party has checked it, no ministry supervises it as an agency, and the only filter available is the one you apply yourself before paying. That is exactly what this page gives you: the verifiable criteria, the limits that nobody can cross, and the official texts they rest on.

What an agency can do, and what it cannot do

The boundary is not a matter of service quality: it is set by the institutions, by the diplomatic posts and by the law. An agency works upstream of the file and alongside it. It never takes the candidate's place in the acts that must remain personal.

The last point is not the precaution of a cautious agency, it is an institutional rule. ULiège writes, in its access conditions for candidates from outside the European Union: "Files for which an intermediary is identified will be automatically refused." (our translation) Its home page for non-EU students adds: "it is essential that you submit your admission application yourself" (our translation). UMons is just as clear: "I submit my application online myself. Any application in which an intermediary has been involved will be refused." (our translation)

Support remains possible and legitimate: choosing the programmes, gathering and checking the documents, meeting the deadlines, understanding a decision. What is not legitimate is letting an agency take the candidate's place in the form, in their mailbox or at the counter. An agency that offers to do everything for you, ULiège and UMons included, exposes you to a refusal that has nothing to do with your profile.

The 7 checks to make before paying an agency

These seven points can be checked from any country, free of charge, before the slightest payment. They do not guarantee the quality of the work, but they weed out most of the structures that do not exist, invoice nothing and stop answering once they have been paid.

1. 1The company number. Every company established in Belgium has a ten-digit company number, freely available on the BCE Public Search of the SPF Économie (Federal Public Service Economy): name, legal form, status (active or ceased), start date, address of the registered office, VAT-liable status, and links to the publications in the Moniteur belge (Belgian Official Gazette) and to the annual accounts filed with the National Bank. An entity with no number, or whose record shows a ceased status, is not a company to contract with.
2. 2The legal notices on the website. Articles III.74 and XII.6 of the Code de droit économique (Belgian Code of Economic Law) require the name, the legal form, the geographical address, a contact email address, the company number and, for a VAT-liable business, the VAT number. The SPF Économie e-commerce guidelines, in their version of 27 August 2026, recommend making sure that this information does not appear only in the terms and conditions of sale.
3. 3A written quote before any payment. It must say what is covered, what is not, the total amount and the payment schedule. A price announced orally, or an amount that changes once the deposit has been paid, is reason enough to stop there.
4. 4A written contract signed before work starts. It sets out the scope of the assignment, each party's obligations, the documents the student must supply, and what happens in the event of an admission or visa refusal. Without a contract there can be no dispute: there is nothing to rely on.
5. 5The payment account. The payment must go to the company's bank account, the one shown on the invoice, and the invoice must carry the company number. A cash payment, a transfer to a personal account or a money transfer service in an individual's name leaves no usable trace.
6. 6The right of withdrawal. For a service contract concluded at a distance, article VI.47 of the Code de droit économique gives 14 days to withdraw without having to give a reason, counted from the day the contract is concluded. Check that the contract mentions it, and read what it provides for if you ask for the work to start immediately.
7. 7Verifiable reviews. A useful review is attached to an identifiable account, dated, specific about the service provided, and published on a platform that allows the company to reply. Screenshots of testimonials, undated messages and a mass of perfect ratings are worth nothing.

What are the warning signs?

Some signals are not open to debate: they point either to a promise that cannot be kept, or to a practice that the Belgian authorities explicitly denounce.

• A guaranteed visa, a guaranteed admission, or a refund promised in the event of refusal, used as a sales argument
• A success rate displayed with no source, no period and no basis of calculation
• A guarantor offered, lent or sold for the undertaking to provide financial support (annexe 32)
• The sale of an appointment at the visa application centre, or of supposed priority access
• Arranged documents, a retouched transcript, a certificate of convenience
• Contact details that are not yours in the file: email address, telephone number, online form reference
• A payment in cash or into a personal account, with no invoice and no contract
• The absence of a verifiable company number, or a company record showing a ceased status
• Pressure to pay immediately, justified by a place to be reserved or a quota about to expire

The Belgian embassy in Dakar, which covers several West African countries, publishes the most direct warning: "All information and all forms are free. Do not let yourself be trapped: Do not pay for information or forms. Do not work with agencies or intermediaries." (our translation) It adds: "Always check the required documents for your file yourself on the embassy's official website" (our translation) and points out that the websites of the Office des étrangers, of the embassy and of the visa service provider are the only official sources of information.

We do not contradict that warning, and nobody should. We read it as targeting three precise things, without the embassy listing them itself: charging for information or a form that are free, selling an appointment, and standing between the applicant and the authority. Our line follows from it: the candidate lodges their own application, with their own contact details; the only sums paid to the authorities are the visa fee and the service provider's service fee; and support is paid for on the basis of a quote and a contract, never for a document that the administration issues free of charge.

The visa application service providers say the same thing. TLScontact writes: "Beware of third-party representatives and intermediaries who sell appointments for the lodging of your visa application" (our translation), and reserves "the right to refuse entry to our visa centre to any person who has obtained an appointment through an intermediary" (our translation). Its centres in Morocco stated as early as 27 November 2023 that TLScontact "will not accept any file containing contact details that are not those of the applicant (VisaonWeb reference, email address and telephone number)" (our translation). VFS Global, for its part, points out that it does not sell appointments, that appointments are free on its own website alone, and that it has no role in and no influence on the decision on a visa application.

The guarantor is the most sensitive point. In a note circulated to the municipalities on 16 October 2020, which we know only through the reproduction published by a portal aimed at municipal administrations, the Office des étrangers cited the case of one guarantor who had signed, for the same year, more than fifty undertakings to provide financial support, and reported "offers of undertakings to provide financial support in the form of annexe 32 in exchange for payment" (our translation) circulating on social media, describing multiple undertakings as "in some cases amounting to outright trafficking in documents and to fraud intended to deceive the public authorities" (our translation), with systematic referral to the public prosecutor. ULiège, for its part, writes that "fraudulent practices have also been identified in relation to so-called 'guarantors' of solvency" (our translation) and recalls the alternative of a deposit into a blocked account.

What does a student whose file has been arranged risk?

This is the point that dishonest intermediaries never mention: the sanction hits the candidate, not the person who produced the document. ULiège puts it bluntly, noting that students "are victims of fraud by intermediaries who offer them their services in exchange for payment in order to facilitate their admission and who sometimes produce false documents, which results in the candidate concerned being excluded from any higher education institution for a period of 3 years" (our translation).

This is not theoretical. In June 2023, according to reports in the Belgian press, ULiège filed a complaint against five people suspected of supplying false documents and joined the proceedings as a civil party, after identifying intermediaries involved in 93 files in total, including at least 45 falsified files. Whatever the criminal outcome for the intermediaries, it is the candidates whose file was falsified who lose their enrolment and their access to higher education in the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.

Why the calendar weighs more than the choice of agency

No agency can promise a visa, and the official figures explain why such a promise would be absurd. According to the Office des étrangers statistical report Étudiants et chercheurs 2025 (Students and researchers 2025), 83 % of the decisions taken in 2025 on long-stay visa applications for higher education at a recognised institution (article 58) were positive, that is 9,761 favourable decisions against 2,032 refusals. But that average rate hides a considerable gap depending on the month of the decision.

A file processed in July therefore has roughly twice the chance of succeeding as a file processed at the end of the year. The statistic covers the month of the decision, not the month of lodging: it does not measure the effect of lodging early, it shows that a file still being processed at the end of the year succeeds far less often. The legal decision period is 90 days from the acknowledgement of receipt of a complete file, and the Office des étrangers recommends lodging the application at least 90 days before the start of the academic year. The real calendar begins much earlier: equivalence of the secondary school diploma, admission to be lodged by 31 March at the latest at the universities, and earlier at some hautes écoles, for non-resident candidates from outside the European Union, legalisation of the documents, and only then the visa.

The rates also vary sharply from one nationality to another, without the Office des étrangers publishing the grounds for refusal by country. Still for 2025 and for article 58, the share of negative decisions stood at 42 % for Cameroonian nationals, 40 % for Moroccan nationals, 28 % for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 15 % for Algeria. The type of institution also counts: applications linked to a programme in a private institution (article 9) obtained only 55 % of positive decisions in 2025, against 83 % for recognised higher education.

How we work at Studacy

We apply the criteria of this page to ourselves. They can be checked without taking our word for it.

• Studacy is the trading name of Studencia SRL, a company incorporated under Belgian law and registered with the Banque-Carrefour des Entreprises (Crossroads Bank for Enterprises) under number 1026.176.658: the record is public and can be checked in thirty seconds
• A written quote before any work starts, and a separate quote for each service (orientation and enrolment, equivalence, visa, scholarship, administrative follow-up): nothing is sold as a package, nothing is invoiced by surprise
• A service contract signed before the first step, stating what is covered, what is not, and what each party must supply
• The student lodges their own admission application and their own visa application, with their own email address and their own telephone number: we prepare, check and orchestrate, we do not lodge in their place and our contact details never appear in their file
• No guarantee of result: we promise neither a visa, nor an admission, nor a timeline, and we do not provide a guarantor
• A team based in Brussels, reachable in French, English and Arabic, working on the original documents and on official sources, dated and cited
• When a project is not realistic, we say so before taking payment, not after

This page is not meant to convince you to work with us. It exists because the question keeps coming back, because the answers available online are often vague, and because the Belgian landscape is very well described with official texts. If these criteria lead you to another agency, or to a fully independent approach, the page has done its job.

What to do in a dispute with an agency?

A consumer who contracts with a company established in Belgium has free routes available, including from abroad. They are followed in order.

1. 1Write to the company by email, set out the request precisely (refund, performance, documents) and set a reasonable deadline for a reply. Keep every trace: contract, quote, proof of payment, exchanges.
2. 2Check the company's record on the BCE Public Search: the Service de Médiation pour le Consommateur (Consumer Mediation Service) only acts for companies established in Belgium and relies on the data of the Banque-Carrefour des Entreprises.
3. 3Refer the matter to the Service de Médiation pour le Consommateur, an independent and free public service (Boulevard du Roi Albert II 8, box 1, 1000 Brussels). It only opens a file if the consumer proves they first tried to find a solution with the company, and it endeavours to handle each file within 90 days.
4. 4Report the infringement to the Inspection économique of the SPF Économie (Economic Inspectorate of the Federal Public Service Economy) through ConsumerConnect, anonymously if need be. Note that the Inspection économique is not there to solve an individual problem, it pursues practices; it is mediation that aims at a refund.
5. 5In cases of document fraud or trafficking in undertakings to provide financial support, reporting falls to the competent authorities: the Office des étrangers invites people to send it suspicious files and systematically informs the public prosecutor, and the embassies publish a dedicated reporting address.