Around 15 per cent of Indian student visa applications consist of fake documents, said German Ambassador Philipp Ackerman recently. Taking such activities into consideration, the German Embassy in India announced that starting November 1, 2022, Indian students must include a certificate from the Academic Evaluation Centre (APS) while applying for a study visa to Germany. The Academic Evaluation Centre (APS), a German Embassy’s Science section division, was established to expedite the visa and student admissions processes. All students aiming to study for an undergraduate or postgraduate degree in Germany have to get their academic documents verified at APS India to obtain the APS certification. The certificate has no expiration date. However, the sudden change in the visa application process has left students confused due to the lack of awareness about the new process, the offline exercise of submitting the documents and the added cost to obtain the certificate. Hitikk Chawla, a resident of Delhi, was admitted to the Goethe University Frankfurt to study MS in Cell Biology and Biophysics in July this year. However, his entire visa application process was delayed due to the newly issued student visa guidelines. “The embassy’s decision to introduce the APS certificate clause is untimed. I only got aware of it when I was about to go for my visa appointment with few days to spare. As the application window to get the certificate only opened on October 1, I had to wait an entire month to apply for the certificate and another three weeks to receive it,” Hitikk shared. As per Hitikk, the entire process to submit the documents for verification was offline and students were asked to either visit the embassy in Delhi or its 4 consulates depending on their geographical location. Hittik was one of the first students to receive the APS certificate in India. “I applied for it on October 1 where I had to fill out the application form and make fee payment online. Thereafter, I received an appointment date for October 4 to submit the documents at the German embassy in Delhi. The entire process took three weeks and I received my certificate on October 28. This process has however changed. Now instead of visiting the embassy, candidates have to send the photocopy of documents through a courier facility,” Hittik explained. The APS process extends the student visa application process by a month. However, this is not the only concern among students as some are also hesitant to pay Rs 18000 as a fee to get an APS certificate Trisha Agarwal, a DU graduate, complains that the fee imposed upon them is unfair as it should be the embassy’s responsibility to get documents verified and not the students. “It’s unfair for students who possess genuine academic certificates to get them verified for such a hefty amount. The cost of 15 per cent students forging documents should not be borne by us. I am disappointed with the new rule. Instead of a hybrid process, we should be allowed to upload documents online for verification. They have complicated the process rather than sorting it,” she said. APS was first established in China in 2001, followed by Vietnam in 2007, and now in India in 2022 to ensure that only eligible students enter German universities. There was no previous system of document verification for Indian students. Explaining the applicability of the process, Vibha Kagzi, founder and CEO of study abroad consulting platform, ReachIvy.com said, “Students who have received scholarships funded by the German or European Union do not have to apply for an APS certificate. The certificate is also not required for students planning to pursue a course that is of 90 days or less in Germany. In the event of a change in the candidate’s eligibility criteria, one may be required to apply for an updated APS certificate under a new category.” Study abroad experts have supported the move claiming that it will streamline the process and will make the process more efficient. “With only genuine cases coming to the embassy, the process will be more streamlined. Student visas will get approved in shorter durations and more applications will be processed. Although their aim is to tap the 15 per cent fraudulent applicants, the rest will benefit with the reduced time at visa allotment,” Roopali Birman, head of counselling platform iSchoolConnect said.
