I'm going to preface this post by saying that not every student will need to apply for a visa. A few of my friends who went to London only needed to apply for one if they planned on doing an internship there. Therefore, I would definitely recommend researching the process before worrying your parents about it.
For the sake of this blog, I will be talking about the French Visa process and what I endured through this lengthy and costly procedure. I won't go into excruciating details, but I'll give a nice overview. In the photo below, my program, CEA, answers a few questions about obtaining a French visa.
There were 4 main procedures:
1. Create a Campus France account
2. Create a France Visas account
3. Schedule an appointment with VFS
4. Go to your scheduled VFS Appointment with all the needed documents
1. Creating a Campus France Account
Creating a Campus France account is just the beginning to a tedious and patience-testing process. Once your school approves your application, I recommend kickstarting this step because of the prolonged process. The fee will run you about $190 USD, which will be processed within 2-3 weeks. If you happen to be late to the game and need it ASAP, then you can have it expedited to 3 days, but it will cost you a whopping $340. Yikes!!
For semester long study abroad students, the long stay visa application is required. The photo below is a sample of what should display on your screen when you begin the application.
It is within this process that you will receive your Campus France ID Number and you will need this later on so keep this handy! It will look something like this: USXX-XXXXX.
After you have completed the registration process and paid their fee, you will receive two email messages in your Campus France “Etudes en France” inbox. You will need to bring these two printed out email messages with you to your visa appointment, along with other documents I will mention later.
2. Creating France Visas Account
My goodness was this step a pain in the derrière!! The questions themselves were fairly basic and simple; there just happened to be quite a lot! You will want to use the same email that you previously used for your Campus France account so that the two accounts can be linked together in their system.
I was unable to obtain examples of the questions because a majority of them contain sensitive information. If you have a guardian with you to answer some of the more detailed questions, this will be smooth sailing.
After this extensive and thorough step is completed, you will be prompted to print out a 6 page document that has all the necessary information VFS and the French Consulate will need. Be sure to bring this to your VFS appointment for a smooth operation!
3. Schedule an appointment with VFS
This should be a breeze if you kept your Campus France ID handy like I mentioned before. There are many VFS centers around the United States and I have linked the list of them above. The earliest that you can attend your appointment is 90 days prior to your program start date. Ah alas, the visa process stole more of my money during this step when I had to pay $28.45 to VFS for their 'services'.
4. Go to your scheduled VFS Appointment with all the needed documents
It is imperative that you go to your meeting with all the documents required for your visa, which should be listed on several documents. If you fail to do so, you may inadvertently extend your visa process. There may be printing services at your VFS location, but I would not rely on that because they surcharge the amount by a lot.
I went to the Boston location on a quiet Wednesday morning, when the office was quite silent. I was told to sit patiently in a waiting room and wait for my name to be called. Once the anticipation was over, I was told to approach the cubicle and hand over all of my documents, along with my passport. The most important aspect to them was that I brought everything I was told to bring to the table. As if my wallet wasn't already whittling to nothing, I had to pay roughly $70 to snowball the final steps of my application. After I was out of the hot zone, I was then taken to the biometrics room, where I had a very unflattering photo captured along with all of my fingerprints scanned. I had to surrender my passport for the duration of my visa process because they were going to place my visa smack dab in the middle of it.
I received my passport roughly three weeks after my appointment because the Boston location was not extremely busy. However, locations such as New York City may take a bit longer to process the application because of high demand. Be patient! It will all be worth it when that sticker will be plastered on your passport throughout your travels :).
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