Visa Process

The visa process for Belgium(Schengen Visa) is an elaborate one. I started my visa process one and half months in advance to the date by when I intended to submit the application. The required documents were:-

- Police verification certificate
- Medical certificate
- Financial support document
- Letter of registration from the institute

Out of these docs the ones I expected to be most painful were Police Verification and Financial support document. I obtained the medical certificate from the designated doctor of St John's Hospital,Bangalore. It took a good 3 days time.The classical confusion was in obtaining the Police Verification Cerficate, I am even tempted to write a separate post about it. After my research I applied for the PVC in the Regional Passport Office,Bangalore,since my passport was issued from Bangalore so it took me just two days to get the PVC. Then I went to the Branch Secretariat MEA,Govt of India,in Chennai for Apostille of PVC.Meanwhile I was arranging my final fin docs and once my loan papers were in place I was ready to submit my visa application.I could manage to submit my application as planned.I was told by few alumni that visa could take a good 2-2.5 months and that prompted me to finish the process asap.

My only advice is to research well and apply for visa in advance(2 months should be good enough).My to be batchmates on Facebook were pretty helpful in this process.I got my visa in 2 weeks time. I arrive in Leuven on 25th of Aug.