Sweden – Residence Permit

As I said before on this blog, I’m going to continue my study in Software Engineering starting this September in Sweden. I will get there in August, 2 weeks before my courses start, to adapt myself in a significant new environment. I said “significant”, because at this moment I’m living in a crowded and busiest city in Indonesia called Jakarta, and I’ll be living in a quiet peaceful village (as mentioned by my new friend in there) called Karlskrona, and I will be living surrounded by Sea! Yeah! Sea!

Now, before I could get there, as an Indonesian, I need some kind of visa to enter Sweden. For you, Indonesian, who wanted to study in Sweden, I’m going to inform you how to get a Residence Permit to Enter Sweden. Wait, is it a Visa or is it the Residence Permit? A Visa is needed when you intend to live in Sweden for not more than 3 months, for students who will be living at least a year, must apply for a Residence Permit.

This is how it looks like

Now, this is what you have to do to:

1. Make sure you have an Admission Letter from your aim University, in my case it is from Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH). Most of students who aim a Sweden University, applied from universityadmissions.se. I was applied for Erasmus Mundus in Software Engineering (EMSE), so my first Admission Letter was coming from EMSE Consortium. Later on I’ve been told, that I will received another Admission Letter from BTH, and this letter came on late May.
2. Make sure you have paid for your Tuition Fee. Though I was applying through Erasmus Mundus Consortium, I didn’t get the scholarship, which means I have to pay the study (and my living cost) on my own. After I received BTH’S Admission Letter, I processed the tuition fee payment immediately. The BTH’s staff informed me when the payment is received, and I can continue to the next step.
3. Make sure you had a Health Insurance. If you are a scholarship recipient, this should be provided by your scholarship provider. if you are not, then you must have a 30.000 euros insurance, provided by any insurance company here in Indonesia. Thanks to God, I didn’t have to prepare that sum of money because my University provides the Health Insurance.
4. Make sure you have sufficient amount of money for your living cost, printed on your own name. In my case, I will be studying in Sweden for a year, then continue the study in Germany. When you apply for a year, you only need to have 10 months living cost of 7300 SEK (Swedish Krona) per month. So the total amount in your bank account should not be less than 73000 SEK (109.500.000 rupiahs / $10.950). You can ask your bank to provide a Recommendation Letter, a proof that state you have this amount. But my method was: I scanned my bank account book, then printed the last 6 months journal of my account transaction from internet banking.
5. Now, you have your Admission Letter and Health Insurance, you have paid your tuition fee, and you have your bank proof, you only need to scan it all (if they didn’t come as digital file) and a scan of your passport (the identity information and pages contain stamped from other places you went).
6. Apply Online. Yes, it is online. Prepare about 40 minutes to 1 hour of your time in front of the computer to fill some form and upload your files. It’s easy and fast. But if you cannot apply online, you need to download a form and send it with copies of your files to Sweden Embassy in Jakarta.

I put my data online on 05/29, I got a phone by Sweden Embassy’s staff two days later telling me that I have granted the residence permit, and I have to come to Sweden Embassy’s office on 05/06 to take picture, fingerprint and signature, no interview needed. Very fast, huh? Yeah, I like Sweden already!

I finally got my Residence Permit card last thursday, 06/20 (as they promised me in advanced that the card will be delivered in two weeks). There’s no need to put some stickers on my passport, because the card itself have a same function as a Schengen Visa. This means, I can travel the whole countries in Europe that allows Schengen Visa! I hope I can make time and money to do the travel! Amin!

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