Telangana: Excruciating wait for visas puts students in bind, bleeds ’em dry | Hyderabad News
The situation is such that students have missed classes in January and got a deferment for joining date to August, which also appears to be difficult to get through owing to delays in visa approvals for various countries.
“I had got through London School of Economics in the United Kingdom for a summer programme, but still haven’t received my standard visa, which I applied in May. Now, I’m putting in a request to withdraw the previous visa application and apply for a super priority visa, which costs 1.5 lakh and, as per standard time, should be processed in a week,” explained a law student. The student has paid 8 lakh for her stay, tickets, course fee, but with the current delays, the opportunity and the money seems at risk.
A similar predicament was shared by a student trying to get to the US. “It is disheartening as I got my i20 as well from the university, but because of these delays, I have lost nearly a year and even now going seems unlikely,” he said.
On an average, most universities abroad charge 2,000-6,000 for application fee and since students apply to multiple institutions this becomes a significant cost. The students are also having to pay a certain amount to agents and brokers.
Meanwhile, experts from consultancies explain this is a result of the pile up from pandemic years, when visa processing was stopped and the students were competing for limited slots.
“This is the result of a pile up from three previous intakes of August 2020, January 2021 and August 2021. In January, 2022, almost 300 students never got a slot or got delayed, forcing them to defer their admission processes. This time too, 25% may not getting visas in time,” Arvind Manduva, co-founder of i20 Fever Consultancy, said.
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