<p>Of course you’re right, @mom2collegekids, that UA is not in a position to keep a student from coming if he was determined to. I’m just scratching my head at how there were no checks in place to keep him from traveling so far without an assurance that his visa would arrive in time. Live and learn, I guess!</p>
<p>^The reason for such lack of checking might be because Bama doesn’t have many international students who </p>
<p>already live in the United States. Except few(really few), most int students I saw here just flew from their home countries. </p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>exactly.</p>
<p>All other int’ls can’t even get into the country w/o their visas in place. Bama probably has never faced a situation where an int’l is already in the country (on a non-education visa) and need his current visa changed to one where he can go to college. </p>
<p>I know that Bama has faced the following situation: Int’ls who come to this country for junior-year high school students as Exchange students, but those students return to their countries, apply/get accepted, and then come back into the country on their education visas. (This state gets a good number of German exchange students for high school junior year.) Paul’s situation was likely new for them.</p>
<p>this situation may now have served as a heads-up for any future in-country int’l applicants. </p>
<p>If you don’t mind me asking, when did you apply for COS?</p>
<p>In regards to your airfare, could you try to price shop through Priceline or that type of company to get better rates? Try different dates, not the holiday weekend, etc.</p>
<p>@beadymom Already offered him a discounted airfare ticket back home for any dates leaving after this Saturday. </p>
<p>Does anyone know about Southwest airline?? seems it has better atlanta-oregon fare than other airlines…</p>
<p>@paul2752 ATL to PDX on Sept 4th on Southwest only $183. You should book it now before it goes away.</p>
<p>I will discuss it with my family and see what I can do. Thanks @voiceofreason66! </p>
<p>@paul2752 You are welcome. Best wishes and safe journey.</p>
<p>Many people use Southwest Airlines. And that is a great price. Don’t wait too long!</p>
<p>^thanks.</p>
<p>Oh, and is there a shuttle/Amtrek/etc that goes from Birmingham to ATL airport?</p>
<p>If you go to maps.google.com and ask it for directions from tuscaloosa to ATL and then click on the icon that looks like the front of a train it will give you public transport options. </p>
<p>Sorry you are having to go through this, how frustrating!</p>
<p>BTW, could you fly to SEA instead of PDX? Could your family pick you up? There might be some better options that way.</p>
<p>Why? Is it cheaper? My mom can, i think</p>
<p>I rarely bother to come back to older threads in which I have posted - when I move on from a thread, I have usually said everything I wanted to say, and probably more than others would have preferred I said. But I logged in and saw all the notifications, found that curious, quickly reviewed the thread in which I had provoked so much activity (I had forgotten all about it) and so here I am :)</p>
<p>What surprised me was the defense of the university, even by the OP. I did not even perceive myself as attacking the school, but I guess any criticism rankles the most devoted.</p>
<p>I really was on the side of the OP in this situation and viewed this situation through my parent eyes. If the OP were my son, and had been allowed to pay all of the deposits, spend all that money on travel to Tuscaloosa, move in to the housing, spend money on food, despite not having such a crucial document as a visa - the key to registering for college for an international student - I would have been very upset. First, I would have been upset with myself as the parent, for sending my son off to college without that visa paperwork complete (and, yes, I grant the whole situation can be confusing any time one has to deal with bureaucratic paperwork, so I am not beating up parents who deal with these situations.) Second, though, I would have been very upset with the university for allowing my son to arrive on campus and move in without that visa in hand. I don’t believe the OP even had a specific timeline for receiving this fully processed visa. So I guess he arrived with a hope and prayer that somehow, within the following two or three weeks, that visa would arrive and everything would work out just fine. I guess I have dealt with too many bureaucrats ever to have such hope. </p>
<p>Is this situation rare? Well, I would certainly hope so. I hope that there not multiple international students spending money to get to US college campuses, only to learn that their visas are not coming through, and they have to go back home. Given how well organized the University of Alabama is as far as the process from moving from accepted application to deposits to housing to Bama Bound orientation to Honors Actions programs, etc, it really makes no sense to me why, for international students, there is not a step in the process where the lack of a processed visa stops the process in its tracks. I will say it again - it makes no sense.</p>
<p>That was the gist of my post. I expressed empathy for the OP, along with my surprise at the circumstances. I admit I don’t find much basis to defend the university when it comes to this situation. At some point, someone has to know what is going on, and, at the very least, it should be the professionals in the admissions department. Sorry if that offends anyone. But I sound more upset than the OP and that, also, makes no sense. It’s not even my problem :)</p>
<p>^oh I wasn’t necessarily defending the school. My mom was thinking about same thing: how could the </p>
<p>school let me in when I was in uncertain situation.</p>
<p>in fact I was pretty annoyed+frustrated+grumpy by how the school could let me move-in even though such </p>
<p>predicament was quite possible…even I wasn’t sure if I could get visa in time, and…I ended up going back to my home. </p>
<p>I know that some int students had similar situation THIS year: not having visa in time after applying to COS in USA. </p>
<p>Not sure whether they finally got visa in time or not, or whether they even stayed in the dormitory. </p>
<p>I hope that the school makes some new policy about, well, not necessarily specific about this situation but about</p>
<p>foreign student in the U.S already. Again, when I went to Int orientation, there were only enough to fill 3/4 of the </p>
<p>russell hall auditorium. That was much less than I thought! Also majority of them came straight from their countries, unlike me, who have been here for 5 years,.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>lol…ok…I’m calling the BS flag on that one. As a parent I would be outraged if the univ had not let him move in w/o his visa yet. It was naturally assumed that it would come thru on time and he was supposed to go to Bama Bound and register for classes. I sure wouldn’t want the univ to say, “uh, here’s the number of Holiday Inn, stay there at $100 a night until your visa comes thru.” </p>
<p>And again, as for the “university allowing” this student to “arrive on campus,” this student is in this country legally and go to ANY state at ANY time and does NOT need or require anyone else’s permission, much less a school’s. The univ would have been overstepping its bounds by telling him he can’t travel to Alabama. </p>
<p>Again, the univ hasn’t likely experienced his situation before. Rarely would an int’l come to Alabama who already is living in the country. </p>
<p>It was all a calculated risk on everyone’s part…and sometimes even a calculated risk doesn’t work out. Paul asked to move in a day or two earlier than his Bama Bound because money is very tight for his family and flight costs were much cheaper to fly-in a couple days earlier. The school would have seemed heartless to have said no. </p>
<p>IMHO, and with all due respect, dear poster, you have no right to feel ‘pretty annoyed+frustrated+grumpy’ by how the school handled this. It is NOT the school’s responsibility to arrange your personal life and provide you housing while you are waiting for visas to be arranged. If you yourself (and your parent, more importantly) felt that they should not have let you ‘in when [you were] in uncertain situation’ then you have no one but yourself to blame for this predicament. I’m sorry that this happened to you. I’m more sorry, however, that any blame should be placed on UA. By anyone. There is a reason that schools in the US ask true international students to have a certain amount of money available, in hand, in local currency, in a bank, and I feel that you did not hold up your end of the bargain by having contingency plans or funds to handle your situation that you put yourself into. UA extended you a generous offer of a fully funded tuition, and I think that for that, some modicum of humbleness should be extended other than this protracted discourse of ‘woe is me’. Sorry, but that’s how I feel.</p>
<p>I agree. To blame the school isn’t fair. The school has no control over the visas. They are between a rock and a hard place. If they are too strict about this, they over-step their bounds and that can bite a student in the fanny. What if the visa came thru a day or two before classes start? Is the school supposed to say, “ok now run onto a plane (no advance purchase) and get your tush out here?”</p>
<p>I don’t know how big the auditorium is in Russell, but there are a good number of int’l frosh each year. Maybe they didn’t all attend that BB? </p>
<p>I suspect that the visa status change was not started with enough advance notice. I do think that if the student had notified Sen Shelby’s office early on this could have been avoided. Going to a congressperson with little power likely did little/nothing. Sen Shelby has been a US senator for over 25 years…he’s got a lot of power.</p>
<p>Oh I actually did ask to the staff of Sen. Shelby…and nothing happened…yet :-(.</p>
<p>I admit that it was unfair to blame everything on school. I have been distraught about what happened to me for last several days …I apologize to people who might have been offended…</p>
<p>BTW @mom2collegekids, the auditorium in the Russel Hall was about 400 people capacity, and I think there were about 300 int kid when I went there. I think some of them were transfer or graduate students. Where else would
int kids go if they hadn’t attended Int orientation?</p>