I am jotting down the important points from my VISA experience. Please get in touch with me in case you need more details.

Once you get your admit from your university, you would have to obtain your VISA in order to enter the USA.

F1 VISA Process

  1. Plan for your financials. This might require you to obtain loan and/or put in sufficient balance in your bank account.
  2. Request I-20 form from your university - this will require you to show the financial proofs. The I-20 form is very very important. It will be required in every step of the way.
  3. Fillup a DS-160 form at CEAC Website
  4. Pay your sevis fee at FMJEE Website
  5. Book your VISA biometric and interview appointment using the DS-160 id in CGI Federal Website.

I was applying for VISA in December 2020 when the COVID pandemic was still going on.

Interview

In the interview I was asked about the university and the course I am pursuing. Then the interviewer also asked me about how I am going to finance my studies.

Once your interview is done,

  1. If your passport is kept by the consulate officer, track the status of your application at CEAC VISA Tracker.
  2. In case passport is given back to you, then your VISA is not approved. In this case, wait for 24 hours. Then again fill up a new DS-160 form mentioning the past visa refusal. After that follow steps from 3 onwards mentioned above.

Miscelleneous

If you want to change your university after you have obtained your F1 visa with another university, then there are two ways. One process is, if you are still in India, then re-apply for VISA and follow all the points mentioned above. Another way is to, go to USA to the first university and ask them for a SEVIS transfer to the second university! Please get in touch with both the school’s international students’ office for details.

Simcard

I plan to use the simcard by the campussim company (provided along with my I20). This uses a mint mobile sim. It’s a MNVO tied-up with T-mobile. The best aspect about this is you can setup your phone number etc before hand and it will be activated as soon as you land in the USA. There are some caveats to use MNVOs like deprioratization. But it shouldn’t be a lot of problem per me.

Some articles for this are: Sim Article 1 Sim Article 2

Credit scores and Creditcard

I realised the peculiarity of credit scores when the apartment which I decided to rent, asked me for extra deposit only because I didn’t have a credit score in USA. Credit scores are used everywhere in USA. You can boost your credit score from the rent that you are paying timely as well if your rental company submits your rent paying information to experian credit beurau. But in my case the rental company greyster had tied up with some company which required SSN to create an account itself. So it isn’t of any use to me until I get a job in US and obtain my SSN.

To build your credit score, the best way is to get a credit card. Similarly, in this case also its kind of chicken and egg problem. There is however a company called Nova Credit which lets you import your credit scores from India and then apply for the credit cards in USA. Please refer to the page

In case you dont have the credit scores at all even in India then you can apply for a deserve-edu credit card. Please refer to Deserve Link.

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