Before You Take Off: Things You Need to Make Sure You Do Before You Study Abroad

So, it’s official: you’re studying abroad. You found the perfect country, you applied to the perfect program, and you were accepted. You’ve picked your courses, you’ve figured out your finances. Now all you have to do is hop on a plane and you’re ready for the best semester of your life…right? Not exactly. The hard part may be over, but you still have lots to take care of before you leave. Once you’ve figured out where to go, what program to go on, and how to pay for it all, it’s time for the nitty-gritty details. Don’t let that plane take off without you come next year—make sure you take care of these all-important details in advance, so when you finally do leave for distant shores you’ll have nothing to worry about but having an amazing time!

Apply for a Visa

The first—and most important—thing to figure out is your visa. It often takes months to secure a visa, and you have to go through lots of red tape to get that little stamp on your passport. And before you can even apply to get that stamp, you have to make sure you’ll have a passport to put it on. Check your passport and make sure it doesn’t expire until at least six months after you get back. If not, you’ll need to get a new one—go here to apply. Once you get your passport under control, ask your study abroad office what steps you need to take to apply for a student visa.

Depending on the country you study in and the length of your stay, you’ll need to get either a short-stay or long-stay visa, and either way you’ll need to apply through that country’s consulate. Look up which consulate is closest to you—for some countries, there are consulates in every region of the US. The visa process differs from country to country, and in some cases can be a huge pain in the butt. For example, Marlyse, a student at Cornell University studying abroad in France, says her visa process took over two months: “I needed to register and apply through a study-abroad website called CampusFrance, then I needed to set up an appointment with the French consulate in my region, then go back twice to apply for and pick up my visa.” Other visa processes are simpler: Samantha, another college student studying abroad, said her process was very quick and easy, and the application only took a few hours to figure out.

Talk to your study abroad advisor and find out if you’ll need a short-stay or long-stay visa: it completely depends on the country, and some require that students who live in a country for more than 90 days get a long-stay student visa. As soon as possible, apply and set up an appointment with your consulate (you’ll  DEFINITELY need to go to the consulate) to minimize any tight scheduling. Ross, a student at Skidmore, wasn’t able to go abroad to Italy this semester because he couldn’t get his visa on time. “It definitely taught me to budget my time better and be more organized, and now I’m going to go abroad in the summer instead,” he says.  You’ll need a bunch of documents to bring to the consulate—this completely varies by country, so make sure you have a thorough list (if your study abroad office doesn’t have one, go to the consulate’s website) and get everything WITH A PHOTOCOPY OF EACH DOCUMENT before you go.

Before you go to the consulate, make six copies of your passport—one for you, one for your parents, one for your abroad program, one for the airport, one for your abroad university, and an extra. And make a quick run to CVS to get some extra passport photos taken—in Europe, especially, the government loves to stick your photo on EVERYTHING. Better safe than sorry!

Here’s the visa info for some popular study abroad destinations:

• Spain
• France
• UK
• Australia
• Italy
• Denmark