US, British, Canadian & Australian Student Visa Info

F-1 Visa Overview

An F-1 visa is a student visa for the United States. It is provided by the United States to enable an individual, who is not a citizen of the United States, to pursue their education within the United States. An F-1 visa is applied for various academic disciplines that range from a course in finance, culinary arts, fine arts, medicine to obtaining a PH.D in Philosophy. It could be applied for any academic or vocational course offered by the various SEVP certified universities or colleges in the United States. There is no quota set for issuance of the F-1 visa.

What are the steps involved in obtaining an F-1 Visa?

An F-1 visa is non-immigrant visa and is applied for by non- U.S. citizens to pursue their education in the United States.

The first step in obtaining a student visa is the application for admission to a Student and Visitor Exchange Program (SEVP) certified educational institution. More on SEVIS and SEVP below.

Once your admission has been confirmed in a college or university, the college or university will issue you an I-20 Form. This form is an informational record in the database of the Department of Homeland Security. This database system is called the SEVIS- Student and Exchange Visitor Information System. It is your college or university’s responsibility to enter your details into the SEVIZ. On confirmation of your admission, the I-20 will be mailed to you and you must produce this I-20 at the consulate when you apply for your F-1 visa.

Once you get your I-20, ensure that the I-20 form is in line with the information in your passport. There should be no spelling mistakes and your name and date of birth are mentioned correctly and are the same as in your passport. If there is a mistake then it is your duty to contact your educational institution and make sure that they make the necessary corrections.

Now that your I-20 is with you, you are required to pay the SEVIS I-901 fee.

The next step is to apply for the F-1 student visa. As a student, you must apply for your visa as early as possible so that there is ample time to process the same. Consulates and embassies will be able to issue the student visa within a period of 120 days from the date mentioned on your 1-20 or the start date of your college or university. If you apply for a student visa before this window i.e before the before the stipulated period, the consulate or embassy will hold the application and issue it before the date specified in your I-20 as the start date of your college registration or college start date.

As part of the F1-visa application process, an interview is held at the consulate or embassy. Depending on your personal information and education course, you may be required to submit additional documents. That said, there are a standard set of documents that every student will have bring along with them to the visa interview. For the most current list of documents, always check the US State Government Travel site

Once you are done with your interview, you will be immediately informed whether or not your visa has been approved. If your visa has been approved, then do ensure to check how and where you can collect your passport. This process varies from consulate to consulate and country to country. Sometimes you can pick it up at the consulate itself and sometimes it will be mailed to you at the specified address in about 3 – 5 days. Do ensure to understand exactly when you will get your passport since there is no point in making travel arrangements without being in possession of your passport or at the very least understanding when you will get your passport in hand.

References

• http://www.ice.gov/sevis/students/
• http://www.ice.gov/sevis/

How to apply for a Canadian Student Visa?

The number of students looking to Canada for their education are increasing each year. The closeness to the United States, the comparative costs of studying in Canada vs studying in the U.S, the quality of education and lifestyle and the lure of good career prospects all make Canada an increasingly preferred destination for the millions of students each year.

The first step to study in Canada is of course to get admission to a college or university in a course that you are interested in. Next up is getting a student visa. This guide will detail the steps you need to take to navigate the Canadian student visa application process.

First up is to get study permit forms from the Canadian embassy in your country of origin or you can download it from here.

Next is to get all the required documentation in order. The documents you would need are listed below.

Identity Proof

Photocopies of your passport along with two recent passport sized photographs. Do ensure that the photos are 2″ x 2.5″. Make sure you write your full name and date of birth on the back of the photographs. Do ensure that your passport remains valid for the duration of the course.

Financial Support Proof

How much money to show to get a student visa for Canada? This question has been asked many times over and is one of the top questions when it comes to Canadian student visas. The rule of thumb to use here is that you have to show enough money to cover your tuition costs and the cost of living in Canada. So for example, if the cost of living in Canada is about $10,000 CDN then you have to show this amount plus the cost of your tuition.

You can either show the money in your ban accounts by providing bank statements for the past 6 months or letter of sponsorship along with bank statements from the sponsor showing enough funds to fund your living expenses and tuition costs when you are in Canada.

Do also note that if additional members of your family are going to accompany you to Canada, then you must add them to your overall living expenses cost and ensure you show enough funds to meet these expenses.

Letter of Acceptance from an approved Canadian university

The letter of acceptance must be a signed official letter from the university and must have your full name, date of birth, mailing address, course details, full time or part time, estimated duration of the course, last date to register for the course, date of course commencement,tuition fee, any conditions for acceptance and all relevant educational details of the college or university such as license

Custodianship proof

If you are under 18yrs of age then you must provide a notarized statement from your parents or legal guardians and the appointed legal guardian in Canada that suitable arrangements have been made for the guardian in Canada to act on your parents behalf if such a situation should arise.

As long as you have all your documents in order, convincing the visa officer of the genuineness of your application should be pretty straightforward. Good luck!!

A very popular question around the Canadian student visa process is how much to show the Canadian embassy when applying for a student visa to Canada? The answer is pretty straightforward. All you need to work on is arranging enough funds that will support your living expenses while you are in Canada as a student and your tuition costs as well.

So basically if you are looking at about $10,000 to $15,000 CDN as your living expenses, you will need to add to that the cost of your education, basically your tuition costs and that is the amount you need to show to the Canadian Embassy. You can show financial proof in the form of your bank statements (usually for a period of 6 months) or you can show a letter of sponsorship along with the sponsors bank statements showing the required funds.

Additionally, if you’ve qualified for a scholarship or grant be sure to show documented proof for the same. This will help in lowering the amount of money that you need to show.

We get many questions on this top and I hope this answers the question. A sampling of the questions are below.

• “Can someone tell me the amount of money we have to show the Canadian embassy for a student visa ?”
• “How much bank balance is required for a Canadian student visa?”
• “Can I show a relatives bank account towards my student visa for Canada?”