Life in Switzerland: Student Visa Complications

Swiss Embassy in Washington, DC

The most tedious and complicated part about doing my MBA abroad is that I require both a Student Visa and a Residence Permit in order to attend. The Swiss are known for their strictness and organization, and their paperwork requirements live up to that expectation. The visa application requirements were (1) Two copies of the application. (2) Two notarized copies of my passport. (3) Four recent passport photos. (4) Two notarized copies of a letter of admission from my school. (5) Two notarized copies of a letter of payment of tuition fees from my school. (6) Two notarized copies of statements of my assets and income including tax returns and bank statements and proof that I can support my living expenses for one year (7) Two notarized copies of a signed declaration that I will leave Switzerland at the end of the program. (8) Two notarized copies of my university transcript (9) Two notarized copies of my resume including biographical data. (10) Two notarized copies of a signed declaration of my future plans after the program is over (11) Money order for $89. They told us to allow at least 8-12 weeks for processing.

In September I spent considerable time and some money gathering all the necessary documents, about 50 pages in total, and mailing them in. My school had a special agreement with the Swiss authorities that allowed all the American, Canadian and Australian students to mail their applications directly to the local authorities in Lausanne instead of to the embassy or consulate in our home countries. I dutifully sent it in at the beginning of October and waited patiently to hear a response. On Monday, November 16, IMD notified us that the local authorities had changed their minds that morning and were no longer accepting the applications, and that we had to completely redo our visa packages and resend them to the consulate in our home country, with only 7 weeks left until the first day of classes.

Luckily, IMD had received back my original application package and offered to forward it on to me for re-use. I verified my address by email and waited impatiently for what I expected to be a 2-3 day shipment. A week and a half and 3 unanswered emails later I finally called them up international long distance to find out why it hadn't gotten to me. After some scrambling they discovered that there was an technical glitch with their email system, and that my emails had never even gotten through their spam filter, and my package was still sitting on their desk waiting to go out. They put it in the mail that day, promising a 2 day delivery to arrive to me that Friday. I had just wasted two precious weeks sitting around waiting for a package that hadn't even left Switzerland, and I was not happy. What's more, the package didn't arrive on Friday, and appeared to have been lost internally by UPS. I spent about 10 hours over the weekend re-doing the entire 50 pages, getting new passport photos made, and asking our very nice State Farm insurance agent to notarize most of the pages. Monday morning I sent off the 2-inch thick manilla envelope in priority overnight mail (Fedex!!) to the consulate general in Atlanta, Georgia, the closest visa desk to Oklahoma.

At 7pm that night my original application package finally arrived, but when I opened it up I discovered that it only included item number (1) Two copies of the visa application, and one copy of my passport. The admin department at my school had obviously not even looked through it, and therefore hadn't been able to tell me that I was going to have to re-do the whole package no matter what since it was missing documents 2-11.

Two full weeks blown, and now there are only 5 weeks left until school starts. All I want for Christmas is my student visa.