The Visa Hell

Hello everyone!

Do you also hold a citizenship from a country that is not in the European Union and want to study in Zurich? Then this article is for you! 

Switzerland is notorious for complex visa processes, and the student visa is no exception. To make things worse, the Canton of Zurich goes the extra mile to make things even more complex.

In this article I will focus on the particularly challenging aspects of the visa application, and skip over the easy ones such as translated grade transcripts etc...

 1. The passport validity rule 

 For me this was by far the most stressful and challenging part. Your embassy won't tell you this, and they probably aren't even aware of it because each Canton has their own rules, but this could be one of the many reasons you visa application gets rejected.

Indeed, your passport is expected to be valid 3 months AFTER the end of your planned stay duration. (source) So in my case as a Master's student, it was expected to be valid for 2 years and 3 months.

Here was the catch: In my country we are not allowed to renew passports whose validity exceeds 1 years, unless they were full. No matter the reason. 

I found a work around that is not relevant to the purpose of this article, but make sure to keep this in mind, the ETHZ immigration guidelines are clear:

Your passport must be valid for at least 3 months beyond the planned duration of your stay. This is very important – your visa will not be approved if your passport expires earlier!

 2. The Proof of (huge) Financial Means

Non-EU students are required to show that they have at least 21 000CHF in a bank account.

Canton Zurich makes it even harder: The bank needs to be domiciled in Switzerland. So if no Swiss Banks have branches in your country, as I did, well... not all hope is lost!

There is a much simpler solution: Find a Swiss citizen or resident that can sponsor you! I luckily knew of one, and he succesfully sponsored another student from my country.

But  as usual, Canton Zurich made things more complicated: The sponsor was request to submit