France Student Visa Survival Guide

France Student Visa Guide for North Americans

Some of the beautiful views you'll see in France.

Exchange Student Visa Step-by-Step Guide

The great thing about traveling to France, that you will no doubt realize while preparing for your trip, is that they love their bureaucracy. In fact, it is almost comical how difficult and complex the travel visa processes can be… and student visas are no exception!

The goal of this post is to give you helpful tips around the key steps in the France student visa application process for North Americans: 

1. Online Visa Form Application
2. Appointment Booking
3. Gathering Required Documents

To honor my duty as a travel blogger, I will provide you exchange students studying abroad with the most useful tips that I discovered while applying for student visas for my semester abroad in Saint-Etienne during Fall 2019.

First of all, Canadians and Americans are fortunate enough to enjoy a 90-day visa-free travel period every 180 days in France or any other Schengen region country. Schengen is a collection of countries that have all agreed to cooperate to facilitate travel among them using a common visa. However, this 90-day period does not allow you to study in any of the countries. Normally for these countries you just need to apply for a Schengen Study Visa that will account for living abroad or studying abroad in any of the member countries, but not France; France has decided that they would like to have their own visa process. This is very important when beginning your application process!

1)  FRANCE VISA ONLINE FORM APPLICATION

To book your in-person Student Visa appointment you will first need to go through the online process to fill out your personal information and receive an application form for your required Visa type. This can all be done at the France-Visas website at this link. For a student studying abroad for a semester at a university in France, I was required to fill out the form for the France Long Stay Study Visa. Making sure you pick the right type of Visa to apply for is crucial. At the end of the process you will receive a document checklist with your complete form, this checklist is different across travel visa types. If you are missing documents or do not have the right specifications when you arrive for your appointment, you will be turned away and they will not do anything to help you on the spot! I highly recommend bringing extra copies of documents, and if you aren't sure if you will need something, bring it anyways.

The student visa form that you receive at the end should look something like this:

Many of the fields will be auto-completed based on the information you provided earlier, and in Canada it is not possible to print off and fill a blank version - so make sure you doublecheck the information! One of our other Canadian writers had an issue where the France Visa type was always wrong, no matter what was selected, and the school address would not populate. To rectify this, he was allowed to write the correct information by hand, along with his signature indicating he had made, and authorized, the change.

Snippet of the France Visa application form.

2) VISA APPOINTMENT BOOKING

This step seems easy enough by the name, but it can prove to be quite annoying given the outdated process and website. The France embassy has outsourced the France visa application process to VFS Global. VFS Global is in charge of collecting and packaging each applicant’s documents into a nice bundle to speed up the embassy’s process. The key things to consider here are that you can only book your Visa appointment within 90-days before you plan to travel in France or study abroad. Summer is typically a very busy time and VFS will warn you that the processing of your application can even take up to 30 BUSINESS DAYS! However, when I was quoted this time my visa arrived within 10 days. Our other Canadian writer was also told that student Visas are often prioritized and processed much faster than the quoted 30 days, but do not plan around this! Additionally, the embassy will prioritize your application based on your required arrival date in France. Picking an office for your in-person appointment can be a pain too because they aren’t located in all hubs, I had to fly to another city for my appointment! You can find the link to book your appointment here (Step 1 must be completed before you do this).

The VFS Global page should look like this:

Make sure you select the proper residencies at the top, as it will change the links redirects.

VFS Global Redirect Page.

3) Pre-Visa Appointment Document Gathering

This step is by far the most annoying and stressful of the whole application process. Missing just one document, or having one not up to the proper specifications, can mean you will be turned away at your appointment and be required to book another. They will not allow you to book another appointment in their office, nor will they even tell you when the next available one is, so it may result in your entire trip being a waste. Because I do not know when, or if, the French government changes required documents, my list that I will provide is only what I used and is by no means intended to be your main or only source for verifying you have the adequate documents. Always rely firstly on the checklists provided by VFS Global and France-Visas (no matter how vague they may seem).

List of the documents required for my Visa application:

1. Signed and printed copy of application form received from France-Visa (see step 1)
2. Print 2 appointment letters provided by VFS Global website after booking your appointment
3. The checklist provided during the online application process.
4. Proof of accommodation for your entire stay with both your name and the address in the confirmation/contract. Airbnb is accepted.
5. Recent letters of acceptance from both your home university and university abroad, ideally written within 90 days of appointment. While I did not have an issue, the agent did warn me that it is a preference, and our other Canadian writer had a classmate denied their application because of an outdated letter.
6. Scan and print passport identification page
7. Photocopy of all passport pages that have stamps or other visas (They will do this for you at your appointment, but they charge $1/page)
8. Unofficial transcript from home university
9. Photocopy of last completed degree. Note that if you have not completed any post-secondary degrees, a high school diploma will be required.
10. Letter of financial guarantee and 3-months bank statements of guarantor (Only if you are not able to provide your own)
11. Last 3-months of chequings and savings account bank statements

In some cases if you are missing a document they will offer you the choice to rebook for another date, or instead have it marked as missing, and your entire application as incomplete. Our other writer was told, that at the time of his application, all incomplete student Visas were being rejected due to high demand, but this is not always the case. We highly recommend rebooking if possible.

Make a checklist and doublecheck it.

Additional Optional Documents to Expediate your Visa

While the documents above are required for the application, you can also bring additional documents, and request they be added to your application, in order to boost your chances of success. These may include, but are not limited to:

1. Proof of flights to, and from, France within your requested Visa dates.
2. Proof of health insurance that will cover your entire stay in France.

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Hopefully our experiences and mistakes can save you a headache and some $$$ as you go through this application process! Please comment and let us know of any documents that might be missing or others that were handy for your application! And once you're in France, make sure you know the one word secret to better baguettes.

At Le French Baroudeur we provide quality content for our readers that is Honest, Informative, and Entertaining. We aim to provide the best travel tips and travel guides for people looking to discover, explore, and live in France. Whether you are a university exchange student studying abroad or just someone looking to visit France, we are the blog for you. Our team of travel bloggers is dedicated to giving you the best information and tips based on our personal experiences and insights from others!