Maybe the most important lesson

 JW202.

This alphanumeric combination represents to us the most critical step in the X-Visa process. It is a paper form, completed in multiples on carbon copies. To get the long-term X-Visa, the student needs to receive this from their school and submit the application themselves to the visa-granting authorities. I thought the answer to the simple question, "Can your school provide assistance with students visas?" would surely mean that the process was already understood by the school.

Back in early August, at the wine-tasting party, a director at a newer private school responded in the positive about her school's ability to admit foreigners and secure student visas. Myles applied for enrolment based on this.

At this point, we were convinced that one of our problems with our inquiry to the Big-Name International School was that we were honest about our concerns with paying tuition. We decided not to open with that with this next school. Tuition still loomed over us it was also in the same range as all the other international schools, but we wanted to see if Myles had a chance to gain admission first.

Emails, texts, online interviews, and tests followed. There was no chance for a campus visit because the campus was not yet open. There also was no opportunity to meet any of the teachers or administrators face-to-face before the school year started. Much of this had to do with the COVID-19 restrictions on schools in Beijing. Still, it was curious. considering the educational and financial commitments at stake. And yes, once again, even when I am pretending that the money isn't important, I'm still wondering about the money.

After a few days of online interactions with  the school, Myles was informed he had been accepted. They sent us all the essential forms for registration. I scheduled a physical with one of our family physicians and started to order supplies online. Randy and I started to work out the difficult details for sending in the tuition money. Our HR department contacted the school to discuss Myles' visa. The school year was only two weeks away. 

The admissions staff was more than willing to help get this moving, and asked our HR department to send over the visa forms or links to download them. This is when everyone involved learned maybe the most important thing about this whole process. 

Schools that have the proper authorization to admit foreigners over the age of 18 will already have JW202 on hand, maybe even a stack of them. There are alternative applications that can be made, but if the school doesn't already know what the JW202 is and how what they can provide is already acceptable, then that school cannot admit foreign students over 18. The JW202 is so important, and yet, I found nothing about it in one of the primary education resources for foreigners in Beijing. For most of the schools that are already on the radar of foreign families with high-school-aged children, the subject of JW202 never needs to be broached. However, with so many new entrants into the "international school" scene, I wonder if JW202 will need to be part of admissions conversations. 

The private high school, to their credit, did not give up immediately. They did contact the local education authorities to see if there were other ways they could support Myles' visa application. Unfortunately, the scope of their license from the education bureau did not permit them to admit full-time foreign students over the age of 18. The foreign students who were previously mentioned to us were short-term exchange students and did not need to be on student visas.

Fortunately, parallel with this process, we were still trying to contact the Chinese Language program at China University of Petroleum. We did not need to ask them specifically about JW202 because we knew they would already have these as they routinely admitted foreign students. The biggest question was whether they could admit non-degree-seeking students who had not yet graduated high school.

The admissions director for the Chinese program responded to us while we still believed that Myles would be enrolling at the high school. He said for the Chinese program, a high school diploma was not required, and that the applications for the fall semester were opening again later that week. He also forwarded us some of the forms, like the physical, that could be completed offline and upload once the application portal went live. We were about to send him a "thank you, but..." email when quite suddenly Myles was in the market again for a visa-granting opportunity.