A 32-year-old B.Com graduate (2011, Delhi University) worked one year in an MNC, then spent a decade out of formal employment — recently freelancing as a makeup artist and informally helping in her father's business. She asked whether a student visa was realistic for what she called her last chance at Canada.
What the thread laid out:
- The gap story must be documentable, not just tellable. The first question members asked cut to it: is there a firm registered in your name, and a business bank account used for the last few years? Claiming ten years of work in the family business with no registration, payroll, or banking trail 'may be challenging — you may have to produce documents.' An unsupported narrative is worse than a modest but provable one.
- The standard reapplicant playbook applies. The most complete answer: cover the gap, choose a course relevant to your actual experience, target a less-saturated province, and write a decent SOP that hits all the key points. For this profile, a program connected to beauty/entrepreneurship or business fits the freelance reality better than a generic IT diploma.
- Age and profile make the SOP carry more weight. At 32 with one year of formal employment, the 'why now, why Canada, why this course' answer is the whole application — members pointedly told her to act on the documentation advice before anything else.
On her request for agency recommendations: the thread named none — the guidance was to fix the substance of the file, which no agent can conjure.