DD has gotten into Spring Study abroad in Istanbul. A student visa it appears will be required. After completing required parents forms, I realize she needs to navigate through some hurdles with tight timelines. That’s where I need some CC help.
Prior to DD’s study abroad, she has three International trip planned between Thanksgiving and then. The one for Thanksgiving can be cancelled to possibly start the student visa application for Istanbul. However, the concern is her getting back her PP in time to travel Dec 19th. She travels again Dec 29 and her travel to Study abroad is late Jan.
While I’ll be making some phone calls to the Turkey consulate tomorrow, I’d like to get some insight/ suggestions from the well travelled and those of you who’ve had some experience with this type of situation or know of others who have.
Thanks Oldfort. That’s one of the options we are exploring. Will know for sure tomorrow when we make contact to see if visa can be issued when she goes in person with her other required documents.
My son has been able to get one day visas from the consulates in New York for some countries, but sometimes you have no choice, but to mail the the stuff in and cross your fingers. Good luck to her!
If they allow it, I would try and put the visa application in in person and to get it done ASAP. I don’t know what Turkey’s requirements are, but I went through this with my son spending several months in China a couple of years ago, and all I can say is it can be a difficult process, if one thing is wrong you can have to go through it again, and mail only makes that more difficult. Especially given her tight deadlines and travel, it might be better if you could handle the student visa in person (if they allow it)
It will cost you an expedited passport application fee, but I’d rather go this route than travel to Turkish Embassy. We had to get second passports when ours were swallowed by a black hole foreign embassy; the alternative was to forfeit our vacation. We went to the passport office in person, filled out applications, and our passports were ready in the afternoon.
Maybe I’m forgetting, but when we visited Turkey in 2012, we just got our visa at the airport in Istanbul. They required
payment in cash, then just handed us the visa. Maybe it’s different for stays longer than a week or so.
Turkey uses eVisa for their regular visas, all in electronic form. I would try to find out if student visas have a different approach. Other than that I would go ahead and apply for a second US passport as suggested above.
I have never gotten a Turkey visa but I have had complicated visa situations where I was applying for visas for countries B and C where they needed my physical passport to process but I also needed my physical passport to travel to country A in the interim. I recommend CIBT (CIBT.com). They have experience in expediting complex visa situations.
Thank you all for providing us with some leads. I can always count on you guys. @BunsenBurner your option is looking pretty good. Did not even know that was possible. It appears the evisa is not an option for student visas.
We use an expediter for my daughter’s student visa to Spain in 2007/2008 as she did not have time to leave her school and get to the Embassy. We used http://www.visalady.com/ as they were local, but they also work nationally. Someone hand carried my daughter’s paperwork and got everything done quickly.
There reason we used the expediter was doe to timing as well as each Embassy depending on the city it was located have different requirements and it was very confusing. It was our understanding she had to appear at the one closest to her home, but then was told she could go to the one closest to school, but the only one that took reservations was yet a third embassy. She would have to have missed 3 days of school right before exams to go to NYC and get everything done. The cost of hotel and travel was more than we paid the expediter, plus she didn’t have to miss classes.
My daughter did study abroad in Istanbul. But to be honest, she managed the details and got her visa by travelling to New York. She is now in Chile for a post-graduate volunteer/work year and managed the visa in Washington DC.
Bumping thread with an update. DD got her second PP , which makes trips a lot easier while she awaits visa.
Thanks all and especially to @BunsenBurner. DD was so surprised I was still on CC that she asked if she had other siblings in HS that she was not aware of lol. Of course I gladly educated her on the Parent Cafe!.
My kid says the Café is where “Alums” of CC hang out.