# Student visa questions



## loladae (11 mo ago)

I have a friend who wants to travel in Europe for longer than 3 months. He is thinking of applying for a german student visa by getting accepted in a school and not attending. I am trying to convince him that this is really risky, but I can't find any informations about retributions, or if universities would report this. Can anyone link me to this information or has an anecdote? Thanks!


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## Harry Moles (11 mo ago)

There are a few hoops to jump through to get that student permit, of course. (Note that if your friend is American or any other "preferred" nationality they don't need a visa, they simply show up in Germany and have 90 days to get things sorted out with the Ausländerbehörde.) No idea whether a failure to actually enrol in classes would cause problems down the road. 

Back a few decades ago it was pretty common for people to register at a German university to get the cheap student transit pass and a residence permit, without taking any classes. My spouse was told to do that that for both doctoral research and a post-doc. I'd be interested to hear if that's still possible because our child is now planning a research semester to conclude their undergraduate degree. They may want to take a course for transfer credit, but if not it might still be useful to immatriculate for the transit pass and permission to work up to half-time. I'm just beginning to investigate the rules on this.


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## loladae (11 mo ago)

Thanks for your responses, Harry! Please let me know what you find.


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## Harry Moles (11 mo ago)

I don't think I'll have a full answer for you because it's a different scenario, but the answer I'm getting from the Ausländerbehörde suggests that it's not difficult to obtain a student visa. The winter semester begins in October, the application period for universities is generally May through August. If someone were to show up and obtain the visa in the summer then not actually attend classes in the fall, I'm not sure that the immigration authorities would notice. (Highly unlikely that the university would report this.) So I can't really say what the risk is. I might check around on some other forums to see if others have done this successfully.


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