The Visa Process, Part 2

I had my appointment to get my student visa at the Consulate General of Spain in New York yesterday. Since it’s about a seven hour drive for me, my mom and I made a trip of it (left Sunday morning at 8am and got back late, late Monday night at 1am). I’ll (hopefully) blog about the touristy things I did in another post. For now, I’m going to talk about my appointment, the preparation for it, and what happens next.

If you haven’t read it already, my first post on the visa process has a list of everything that’s required. The last two things I had to do were get the passport pictures, which cost a little over $10 at Walgreens, and the prepaid label from UPS.com. That cost about $22, and I entered my own address for both ‘from’ and ‘to’ on the website. I had trouble printing from Chrome, but surprisingly no problems when I switched to Internet Explorer. Go figure.

Onto the appointment itself. First things first, the address of the consulate is 150 E 58th Street. It’s a big building, and the consulate is on the 30th floor. It was pretty easy to find, and the nearest subway stop is 59th Street or Lexington/59th Street.

This is the entrance to the consulate (photo courtesy of Google Maps Street View). It’s the big gold doors in the center.

(If you’re looking for a hotel, I stayed at the Park Savoy at 158 W 58th Street. It’s about a 5-10 minute walk to the consulate from there, and it’s on the same street. A room with a queen bed for one night was about $180.)

Once you’re inside the building, go around behind the reception desk to the elevators and go up to the thirtieth floor. There’s a security guard inside the entrance to the consulate. My name was checked off a list, and I went inside to sit in a reception area, pretty much like at the DMV. They called my name to go to a window within a couple minutes of my appointment time, and the whole “interview” took about five minutes. He spoke to me in Spanish, switching to English when I got a lost look on my face but going back to Spanish after he clarified what he’d just said. If your Spanish isn’t that great, I wouldn’t worry about it.

I had everything all ready to go in a folder which I slid under the glass to the worker, and he went through it, taking what he needed and giving me back everything else. I got back my original medical certificate and background check (with apostille), which I will need in Spain to get the NIE, or foreigner ID number. I also had extra copies of things he didn’t need, like the front page of my passport, but I would take a copy of every document just to be on the safe side.

After going through my paperwork, he handed my receipt to me. I think you’ll need to bring that with you to pick up your visa if you’re going to do it in person, but he told me I don’t really need it since I’m having it mailed to me. He quoted me an estimate of 2-3 weeks, which is a lot earlier than I expected! He also said he’ll have my visa valid as of September 1, even though the program doesn’t start until October 1 and I said I wasn’t planning on arriving until September 15. It was a really easy appointment, and as long as you’ve got everything on the list, you shouldn’t have any problems.