Hi. I am an American who will soon be applying for an LLM program to UK schools. When the time comes and I have to apply for a student visa, I want to know what documents I need to turn in. I already went to the website and from what I gathered I need to turn in the following: my acceptance letter from the school, how I intend to pay for my education, my bank account statement with sufficient funds. I also assume I need to turn in my passport info. Now do I need to physically mail my passport or is a photo copy of the first page with all the vital information sufficient.

As far as I gather those are what I have to turn in besides having to fill out the online application. This is where you come in, for those Americans on here who have gone through this, am I missing something? What else do I need. I just want to make sure I know ahead of time what are the things I need to turn in so I'm ready when the time comes. Thanks.

My information is a couple of years old, but to respond to your questions based on my experience, you do need to mail your passport to the consulate office in your part of the country in order to have the entry/student visa affixed to one of the pages. This proved to be a relatively (or at least surprisingly) expedient process for me. That's not to say that it got turned around in a matter of days, but a few weeks' processing time seems to fit with my recollection of things. Also, I am unsure whether this is applicable to you, but if you are receiving student loans to pay for your education, those are likely disbursed by the university after you have arrived. By contrast to the visa process, the process of opening a bank account was a nightmare (compounded by a postal strike at the time), and took quite some time. All that is to say, though, that I received my visa with only proof of an entitlement to student loans. I was not required to have received the loan money and deposited it into my U.S. account.

Last, there have been some significant changes to the U.K. visa process, even in the last several months, so now that I have long-since returned home (for the time, it seems), you should take my responses with some skepticism. That said, the U.K. is quite used to receiving foreign students who both require visas and cannot pay for their education without student loans, and I do not think you should be too concerned with this aspect of the process. It is really far less complicated and - if you plan somewhat in advance, as you are indeed wise to be doing - this will be pretty close to a non-issue. I think I submitted my visa materials in the spring or early summer pre-dating my arrival in the U.K. in October.

Maybe some other users can give you some more updated information, however.

Hi. I am an American who will soon be applying for an LLM program to UK schools. When the time comes and I have to apply for a student visa, I want to know what documents I need to turn in. I already went to the website and from what I gathered I need to turn in the following: my acceptance letter from the school, how I intend to pay for my education, my bank account statement with sufficient funds. I also assume I need to turn in my passport info. Now do I need to physically mail my passport or is a photo copy of the first page with all the vital information sufficient.

As far as I gather those are what I have to turn in besides having to fill out the online application. This is where you come in, for those Americans on here who have gone through this, am I missing something? What else do I need. I just want to make sure I know ahead of time what are the things I need to turn in so I'm ready when the time comes. Thanks.