Vicious VISA

No!!! Not your visa check card, even though that can be vicious if you misuse it. I’m talking about that visa that accompanies your passport when you go to another country. As soon as you are accepted, you should apply for a visa. There are many types depending on your country of study but many find the student visa suits your needs. However, keep in mind you cannot work with a student visa! So if you plan on making some bucks, research the visa types to see which one best suits your situation.

Applying for a visa requires filling out a tedious online application that asks everything you could possibly think of about your life. To fill the application out completely, you need your passport, email address, itinerary, and address of your study abroad residence. You may start it and realize you do not have all the paperwork together. If that is the case , you can resume the application within a certain amount of days to fill out the rest .

Once you finish completing the online portion, you print all the pages and set up an appointment to complete biometric data at an application support center. Biometrics sounds fancy like you are going in for some type of make or break interview where if you mess up and say something asinine you can’t go abroad, but it is literally fingerprinting and a picture. I am from area code 757 and I was able to do all my appointment in Norfolk, Virginia. I did not have to make a trip to Washington D.C.—like I previously thought—for a meeting which took all of five minutes. If I had gone to D.C. for that, I would have been fuming the entire way home.

After the appointment, you can now mail in your application. You should mail the printed off visa paperwork, your passport, the fee, evidence of how your trip is to be funded, passport sized color photograph, and evidence of your acceptance to study. However, make sure the date you send your visa is three months or less away from the date of your departure. For example, if you leave for Spain September 15, you can’t send your visa paperwork until July 15, if you send it any earlier your application will be denied.

As you can see, the visa can be grueling but it is a lot less stressful if you apply in a timely manner and you are meticulous in filling out each portion.