Feel Confident about your Passport and Visa

     It can be nerve racking to deal with the documentation required to study abroad, so I wanted to make a brief guide of my experience about what you can expect so you can feel confident about handling your important documents for studying abroad.

     First, I recommend that once you are accepted into your program with CIEE to turn on your email notifications on and check both your spam and junk mail frequently to make sure you don’t miss important emails generally. I once missed a very important email that went to my spam about registering for Yonsei classes, where I could have accidently locked my account for registration so don't make my mistake! 

     Secondly, when you decide to apply for study abroad please be sure to check your passport as soon as possible. Double check that it won’t expire and isn’t damaged. If it doesn't pass this criteria certainly begin the process of getting a renewed or new passport as soon as possible. You'll need your passport for travel but also for many applications and later to apply for your visa. Because of this I would recommend getting a new or renewed passport before applying to study abroad so by the time you need it for applications you can have it without the expedited fee. In my case, I had to update the photo on my passport because my original photo was unbelievably bad that it had genuinely looked like I had stolen someone’s passport. For reference it was 9th grade, I had full Dora-style bangs, and the photographer at the post office somehow made my noes disappear and my skin unbelievably orange. So in an effort to not get stuck in a foreign country because my photo looks questionable at best, I knew I needed a new passport. I also highly recommend going to the nearest Fedex and paying them to take your passport photo. No long lines at the post office, no low quality cameras at USPS, and you can pay for another retake until you get a photo that does the trick, or at least looks like you. After these things you can follow the instructions to renew or get a new passport with the new photo. In my experience, this was a great decision because I now have a passport photo that looks like me and is acceptable for study abroad applications and international travel for the next decade. Highly recommended.

     Additionally, I can’t thank CIEE enough for their guidance and service on gaining a visa for South Korea. CIEE gave us a detailed PDF on how to successfully navigate the external visa service called Travisa which was so helpful and convenient. I was really nervous about getting my visa because I had heard it was a headache and took a long time to process from other friends who had studied abroad without CIEE. While it does take a long time to process, CIEE’s connections to Travisa made the process as easy as possible which made me feel a lot more secure in my application. 

     Lastly, do not wait to apply for your visa, it might become a disaster. The last situation you want to have is an issue with your visa when you are scheduled to go abroad in a week. Because of this, I recommend that the second CIEE sends you the PDF on attaining a visa, collect all your application documents together so you can be done as soon as possible when it is time to apply. This also gives yourself time to fix and resubmit your visa application if there happens to be an issue, especially because there are a lot of documents so it can happen to the best of us. And having the ability to reach out to CIEE staff during the visa application was greatly appreciated and comforting during the detailed visa application process.

     For Korea specifically, when you get to Korea students must also apply for their Alien Registration Cards, or ARC Cards, which can feel overwhelming as well. However, CIEE made this process so convenient by connecting with an external company so everyone can apply with ease and get their photos taken on the same day. CIEE’s connections and help in figuring out the serious documentation that you must do on your study abroad journey was so appreciated and convenient. There were many moments that I have been thankful to CIEE for their guidance, experience, and connections in navigating these important documentation applications. 

     As someone who has never traveled internationally, I felt like I was a fish out of water sometimes. But having CIEE to help guide me through these documents and helping us with their connections to make things significantly easier was seriously so comforting and important to a nervous lady like myself. So genuinely in my experience, between the ease of getting my documents in order and setting up events and social connections that help you make friends and experience the culture, I can’t imagine how my life would be without CIEE's help and support. I know many study abroad students at Yonsei who were left to their own devices and really struggled figuring out their documentation, housing, and generally felt alone. But I can truly say that I have never felt alone or certain stress from documents thanks to CIEE. Lastly, I decided to include photos of some of my favorite moments I have had thanks to CIEE specifically ranging from my close Seoulmates group to friends I have made thanks to CIEE events. I hope that you feel more empowered on your application journey for studying abroad and feel supported knowing that CIEE has your back no matter what.