Student Visa with Language School

[scottcr1]

What are the visa requirements for French language programs? I see that CampusFrance handles a lot of the processing/etc for higher education but it doesn't appear that you need to go through Campus France for a basic language course.

Most of the courses I have looked into are 4-8-12-24 week long programs with some offering courses after 24 weeks and some even offering 48 week programs. If you apply for a 30 week program, would you get a 1 year student visa? Or would they truncate it to the exact length of the program?

Also, is there a minimum number of hours per week that you need to be in class for to obtain a student visa? Most offer 15-20 hours of instruction per week. However, I would rather have around 10 hours per week if possible.

Just wondering if anyone had any experiences with this.

[Joppa]

Normally you need a minimum of 15 hours a week of contact time (i.e. actually learning in a class or with a teacher, not self-study) to be eligible for a student visa, as the course is deemed to be full-time.

[Bevdeforges]

I suspect that if most schools are offering 15 to 20 hours per week of classes, then that's probably what's required for getting a visa.

It's tough to tell exactly how long you'll be able to stay in France if you're on a student visa for a 30 week language course. Anything less that 90 days and you don't need a visa at all. Then again, the visa simply allows you to enter France for the purpose you used on your visa application. It's normally up to the prefecture granting you a carte de séjour (or now, the OFII, who validates your visa after your arrival) to determine how long you can stay.

We had one student here recently who said that they seem to be granting students only 6 month titres de séjour at a time, meaning that you'd have to renew for the last few weeks of a 30 or 48 week course. Of course things can vary quite a bit from one prefecture to the next. Probably best to check with the school you're thinking of attending.
Cheers,
Bev

[someday81]

If I'm not mistaken (and I hope I'm not because I'm going through the process myself), everyone has to go through CampusFrance. I will be an inedpendent student, so I went on CampusFrance and registered with the personal information and then applied directly to the school. Once I received the acceptance notice I sent a copy of that along with the money order to CampusFrance. I'm just waiting now.