Visa before choosing a school?

[Chicago_pengyou]

I'm still in the process of choosing a school this summer but the visa application requests a school name, address, and phone number. I'm unsure of which city I will study in also. It will either be Beijing or Dalian so I'm not sure which city to include either. Is it a big deal if I list a potential school and city?

I know I need to begin this visa process as I leave in 2 months.

Thanks for your help!

[imron]

Choose your school and your city first. You will get an invitation letter from the school to get your visa. Once you have that letter, it will only take a few days to get the visa.

[Chicago_pengyou]

Thanks for the reply.

For anyone else that may see this, I'm not sure where imron is from but before imron replied, I called the US Embassy and they said that it was not absolutely necessary that the contact information be filled out in order to be approved for a visa. I imagine though imron is right, I should pick a school first.

[imron]

What kind of visa are you applying for? If only a 30 day tourist visa, then you can apply without needing anything. If you are applying for a student visa, then you need to have an invitation/enrollment letter from the school.

[zhouhaochen]

be careful, since January this year neither companies nor language schools can issue F-Visa invitation letters. This is being implemented step by step in different embassies (UK already doesnt work anymore, US so far still does). All invitations have to be issued by the government, which is a very tedious process. Any questions pm me, I spend days working on stuff like this.

It doesnt matter if you study in Beijing or Dalian though for getting a visa.