Visa Officer Shares Most Common Reasons Why US Visas Get Rejected

welcome everybody this is going to be an amazing conversation going deep on Visa interviews especially the most common reasons why student visa interviews end up in rejections denials and we're going to try and fix that help you guys out we're going to have an amazing conversation today so welcome to the webinar friends um I'm Rob with China coaching we've got our friend Ben with Argo visa and we're going to let people tune in here uh welcome on this Monday thanks for coming to hang out I know a lot of people are doing their visa interviews getting ready for the the fall semester and this is going to be a really fun conversation we're going to be talking about kind of the six most common reasons rejections happen for Visa interviews uh China coaching is all about helping you guys be successful in your cross-cultural journey study abroad immigration visas career adapting to American culture and we're gonna be focusing on that Visa element today so Ben welcome we've done some great videos and collabs together I love working with Argo visa and Ben please go ahead and introduce yourself thanks Rob it's really great to be here I always love talking to you and talking to your audience uh like Rob said my name is Ben I was a Visa officer I was a U.S Diplomat and I worked abroad in embassies and conflicts around the world including China to post in China and also in South America and then after I left the government I started helping people get their visas issued because while I was on the inside I saw that there were so many Visa applicants who were getting refused unnecessarily because they they weren't preparing correctly they didn't know what they were preparing for they made simple mistakes they didn't make it easy for the officer to issue their visa and then they get put in a bad spot so now what we do Argo Visa we've got over 20 officers that have worked in 35 countries speak 14 different languages and we've adjudicated in total over 1 million visas and we use all of that experience and all that knowledge to now help you pass your visa interview I love it I love it and I'm Rob uh we haven't met before with China coaching uh actually spent eight years living working in India I've traveled all over the world so I get that abroad Journey being a foreigner working and studying abroad and yeah now I'm excited to help you guys out on your journey and so before we get started I'm here in the Dallas Texas area Ben's actually tuning in from California visiting some family out there so we want to know where you guys are watching from so go ahead and tell us in the comments um we've got Texas and California going on with us but let us know in the comments your city your country we want to know um where our awesome giant coaching audience is tuning in from so tell us in the comments um we'd love to see where you guys are joining us from today uh which parts of the world and how we can help you guys the best all right we've got India Uzbekistan very cool Welcome Friends uh who else do we have here we got Nigeria Italy Nepal Bangladesh Pune India uh Colombia Kenya uh awesome Maharashtra Colombia again Ethiopia Jordan I mean this is incredible we have a global audience here today wow Ben have you have you been to any of these places that have been listed so far well Colombia I worked as a Visa officer yeah yeah I've been to India twice for for visits uh let's see what else do we have here yeah it's great to see so many people from so many different countries Welcome Friends okay well let's get started here again we're gonna do some live q a at the very end and if you're watching the replay again throw in the comments we want to see in the replay group where you guys are tuning in from but the first kind of common reason why rejections happen is giving a memorized answer so Ben explain what does this mean and why is it important it's true so many students will go into the visa interview and they think okay they're going to ask me specific questions and I'm going to give my answer that I've memorized for that question thinking okay there's right answers and wrong answers but that's not really what's going on in the visa interview they're not looking for the right answer and then they're going to penalize you if you give the wrong answer they're just trying to understand what your plan is who are you what are you going to do in the U.S what have you been doing in your home country are you a good student uh what what what situation is your family in they just want to have a conversation with you and they want to believe that you're being honest with them if you're giving a memorized answer even if it's true even if everything in the answer is 100 True when you've given a memorized answer it doesn't sound like it's coming from your heart it sounds like you've read it on a piece of paper and now you're reciting it so it could be true or someone for whom it's not true could have read it and memorized that same information so speaking uh casually conversationally um and just giving the answers naturally as they're asked knowing what you want to talk about but not giving a memorized answer that's the way you want to approach the interview you don't want to be super stiff and formal you want to speak like you're speaking to if anyone's you know had a had a job yet um you know in the office speaking like you're speaking to a colleague in the office you're going to be professional but you're going to be friendly as well yeah yeah I feel like um if you're gonna prepare which preparation is very important better to maybe have some like bullet points and the key topics you want to cover but share them in a natural conversation and not like a memorized script or giving a speech because that's just going to sound weird and not normal and natural to a Visa officer absolutely and you can definitely tell when someone is nervous and scared and just trying to memorize and repeat each word and that's going to be kind of a red flag so we want you guys to avoid that so and I think a good thing is just practice you know uh yeah practice talking it to people beforehand so it'll sound more natural with the VISA officers okay if you have a friend that's helping you if you have a friend that's hoping you uh tell them not to just stick to a list of questions tell them to ask questions that you're not prepared for right because that's going to happen in the interview yes yes everyone always asks what are the questions I'm going to face and it's like you know what the questions are different every time oh yeah so you have to be ready for that another common reason rejections happen is failing to give context uh let's Ben tell us tell us what this means yeah so a lot of students are going to school and and maybe they're going on a very uh direct path where they they graduated from a secondary school they go straight into an undergrad program they study one one major and then immediately afterwards they're going into a master's degree and they're studying the exact same same program uh you know with that the context is kind of in the story but if you've had a gap if you've studied uh made a change in your in your major if you took off time to do an internship right if you're changing uh from one school to another mid mid program right all this context don't just say that you're doing it explain why the same way that you would to some friends right if you told your friend I was going to this school now I'm going to another school what's their next question going to be okay cool why why'd you decide to do that anticipate that right they want they want to see you as a person with a complete story so give them that complete story whenever you're talking to them right don't just give okay he or she asked um how long has it been since I graduated from my undergrad So my answer is three years no well think about why they're asking this question right they want to know what you were doing they see oh you graduated but now there's there's a gap and you're going back to school why what were you doing during this Gap why do you want to go back to school now all these questions are the natural questions in the back of the Visa officer's mind actually they're in the front of the Visa officer's mind answer them before they even get a chance to ask right you want the peace officer to know as much about you as possible that's that makes it much easier for the Visa officer to click that issue button yeah yeah uh because I feel like a lot of the questions that obvious officers ask is trying to get to the why what is the purpose what is the reason and the more you can preemptively kind of explain and give those details fill in those gaps that's going to be a smoother conversation it's going to remove any doubt and the worst thing you can do is leave the Visa officer with doubt you know having unanswered unexplained things because that's going to lead more towards red flags um you know not not totally sure of your situation and so you know in an inappropriate amount not too much information but an appropriate amount of information you want to be able to tell your story fill in those gaps explain your reasons and that's the importance of context so and that kind of I think leads into our our next uh this kind of pairs well with the next point is giving short and complete answers uh this kind of relates to context but also it's its own red flag yeah and this this also relates to the first question about giving uh you know giving those really those short answers this is one of those things that drives the Visa officers crazy even though those memorized short answers where somehow I'll give an example that's not for students um but this is something that we faced all the time uh in China was asking somebody okay so what's your purpose of travel to the US business okay well what kind of business Commerce okay what kind of Commerce uh merchandise okay what what type of merchandise uh inventory right just giving these extremely broad word broad answers that could be anything right you don't really know what this person is going to do giving an answer and I'm not saying long answers it's not long answers you want to give full answers answers sufficient animations yeah yeah answers that have some meat in them that have some that are you know have some real substance to them you want to give answers that are going to really make the Visa officer feel like oh I've gotten a lot of information out of that answer and so it's going to be something more like uh in that business example I'm going on a business trip to meet with some of our customers in the U.S uh we've I've worked for a company that makes plastic uh plastic laminate and they've been working with us for a while so I'm going to visit their sales facilities some you know something like that oh wow okay there's some real story here right there's a reason there's a plan there's an itinerary giving giving something like that so for school as well I'm studying computer science okay if you've just come out of undergrad and you're going to grad school you know that could be a real full answer but if you're if you're taking some time off and now you're coming back to school so what are you going to do in the U.S uh well I'm going to study computer science because after my undergrad I started working and I got into computer science and taught myself a lot of programming and now I want to go and and get some credentials so that I can up my my prospects in the job market right something like that really lets the peace officer know okay you've got a plan this is a person who's got a plan who's got goals and they know how they're going to accomplish them mm-hmm I think too also when they like ask about why this University you know not just one word or one single sentence but really explain why this University you know what attracted to you why you picked this one versus other ones you know why you're excited about it um not just because you got scholarship but explain how the scholarship helps or how much scholarship you get you know give a little bit extra details uh to give a full answer uh because the short of the answer like Ben said it's just gonna frustrate and confuse the US officers and not help have a good conversation rob you bring up a really good point there and so I'll add on to that about the university and why you chose it huge mistake that so many students make at their F1 interview is they say they say facts about the university this university has an excellent psychology program they have so many professors and and such a and so large a campus and this much acreage and and right they talk about the university but they're not asking you is this a good University they're asking you why did you choose it right there are thousands of universities in the U.S to choose from right so I want to hear the type of story that when I ask my friend right in America who went to University hey why did you go to the University of Kansas and they say because I know they're not from Kansas right let's say they're from Delaware and they say oh you know well growing up I was always a big basketball fan and I loved University of Kansas's basketball program and so it always just kind of been a dream right that's not an academic reason it doesn't say the school is great but it tells me this is real right it's a real story so if your real story and sometimes students will tell me the real story and say but I don't think I could say that and I say that's absolutely fine an educational consultant uh told me about this school uh they you know there were five schools that I looked at I applied to all of them um this is the one that I felt like was really attentive and responded to my emails and also they gave me a good amount of scholarship another school gave me more scholarship but the program isn't really what I want to study so I chose this school instead that that's a real story that's what they want to hear when they ask why did you choose this University yeah yeah I feel like like you said a lot of students will give the facts you know kind of a fact sheet or and that goes back to the memorize answers you're just giving a memorized answer spitting out facts but that's not going to impress a Visa officer because they've probably heard all those facts before they want to know your reasoning your purpose your story um it's kind of like your you know your sop your statement of purpose you know uh you're telling your story it's like your cover letter you know so make sure you try and communicate it in that way and again even with the Y University don't give a memorized answer but give a personalized answer and that's gonna be more convincing so yeah thanks for taking that tangent because yeah that's really important uh I know a lot of people ask I get that comment you know how do I answer that question of why this University well I don't know that's your story so tell your story I can't exactly your story so all right friends if you're drinking some chai or coffee or something to get you going today our try question for you is what location is your visa interview where are you going to be giving your visa interview at or hoping to let us know in the comments um yeah tell us the city the location um where are you guys going to be um given your visa interview we'd love to see which consulates which embassies are popular amongst our community all right we've got Mumbai Delhi um let's see where else are people coming okay I've got a lot of Mumbai coming in uh so I don't know if you guys have known on our Channel we have a pretty recent video that's been going viral about one of the consulate these officers in Mumbai there's an Asian American a chinese-american officer that people have had a lot of rumors about I don't know Ben if you've heard about this person before but in Mumbai India there's a lot of chatter amongst the students about there's this one specific officer that tends to reject more than often uh people kind of are feel for fearful of this officer so we made a video about it but I'm curious if you've heard of that before or not I I haven't heard of this this specific one but there's always these stories and there's it's always possible that there's someone that's really out of sync with with everyone else but I've worked in some of the biggest Visa operations in the world Guangzhou China Shanghai China uh and and did temporary duties in Beijing and Chengdu and also in Colombia and been to Consular sections at other embassies as well and I've known hundreds of Visa officers the Visa officers are usually very much tending towards a an average in terms of how many visas that they're issuing and how many visas they're refusing maybe for an entire Visa section like in Mumbai which is a big one the Visa refusal rate I'm going to choose a uh you know a estimate right now let's say 25 percent there may be officers that are refusing 20 and there may be officers that are refusing 30 but it's very very unlikely that there's going to be an officer that's refusing 80 percent when the average is 25 so yes and yes when I was working there was one person that we knew on the inside we knew that this woman had uh an exceptionally High refusal rate but when I say exceptionally High our average was about 15 and her refusal rate was over 20 percent so barely higher consistently right and so and so yes it was higher in terms of what we're looking at where we're all thinking we want to be consistent we want to have uniform decisions and someone was out of sync with that so and also I think that usually whenever I hear these stories about there being one officer who's the uh the Visa killer the one who denies everybody it's usually somebody who's um an American who's not uh what you might think of as an American Diplomat from from you know movies or TV it's not it's not a it's not a you know a white European descent uh American and so they might just stand out more and so when people tell their story they say well you know they'd say oh it was an Asian American or oh it was a it was a it was an African-American and and the story just stands out more so don't let that influence your thinking at all when you go into the interview yes some people have been refused right and when they've been refused and they say it was an officer who reviews and it was the Asian officer is that that sticks out more if you go in and you get an Asian American officer you can trust this is just as much an American as any of the other officers and they're and they're you're gonna get the exact same chance right they're they're not going to let the management there is not going to let someone refuse 80 of people when the average is 20 yeah so yeah take courage yeah thank you so much for clarifying that uh friends I know that you're probably watching Maybe on YouTube or LinkedIn for this live stream but uh try and coaching and Argo Visa are very active on other social media platforms especially Instagram I know Ben puts a lot of other great tips on Instagram YouTube shirts so be sure to follow those um and uh yeah we've got a Great China coaching newsletter that's where you can learn about uh events like this so be sure to connect with us on our newsletters on other social media Avenues because that's we just want to keep teaching you guys helping you guys that's a great way to interact and learn so connect with us there all right we've got some more rejection reasons and then we're going to jump into some live q a so get excited I see all these questions coming in we're going to get to as many as we can so uh thanks for your guys patience but all right Ben another big rejection reason is family relations in America I know they'll ask hey do you have family in America what does that mean and why is this uh something we should be cautious about yeah well it's because if this concept of ties ties to your home country right everyone you know kind of knows this term if you've done any research about visas and Visa refusals too which that form they'll give you says oh lack of ties to the US and people think what does this mean I'm from I'm from India why why do they think I don't have ties to India well really what that means is they're just looking for reasons why you're going to come back to your home country and not stay in the U.S forever then the second thing the second corollary is that they're they're assuming that family members will behave similarly right so if your parents have both gotten U.S tourist visas and gone to the U.S with no problem come back home it's much more likely that they're going to give you a tourist visa without any any issues in the same way if you've got any family members that are in the U.S currently you need to know how to talk about that because their status in the U.S how they got to the US what they're doing in the U.S is going to is going to give the Visa officer an idea of what you're going to do they're going to assume you're going to do the same thing unless you give them a reason to think otherwise sometimes having a family member in the U.S if they're doing something that's very um let's say standard and by the book and they're in the Visa status let's say they go and they get a degree from a recognized university University of Michigan master's degree now they're working in Silicon Valley as a developer on an H-1B visa that's great you should you should actually bring that up proactively in the visa interview right you you put that brother on the on the ds160 and you tell them actually I'm following in my brother's footsteps he's uh went and got his Masters and now he's working on his H-1B he's been there for for three years something like that because they think okay well this is the path we want you to be on right but if you do have a relative who has gone to the U.S and and not used their visa exactly as it was meant to be used you need to be ready to explain why you're different why you're going to do something different why you're not going to follow that same path differentiate yourself put space between you you know you've got different goals and tensions a different situation different Financial Funding you don't want them to think that oh you're going to do the same thing that your uncle did if your uncle was misusing the Visa mm-hmm yeah yeah and I know there's a lot of different Pathways to America you know for a lot of our audience it's going to be F1 student visa then hopefully maybe H1B and then maybe other things later on um but there are people that maybe have family that have come other ways you know Green Card Asylum Seekers refugees DVA lottery so does do those other types of visas if they have family closer distant relatives on those do those make an impact different versus like F1 and H1B yeah every every one of those is going to have a little bit of a different effect depending on the context for instance um uh asyli right that's something where uh if they're thinking okay your family has a reason to be fearful for their their safety in the home country and somebody's claimed asylum in the U.S that's that's one where it's it's going to be negative if they know that you have a family member uh who's claimed asylum in the U.S I've helped someone uh who did have that exact situation um because his his brother had claimed Asylum maybe 15 years ago um to show that it was a completely different situation in the past um you know the situation in the country has changed there's no longer this type of danger etc etc and we were able to get him his Visa issued um but for all those other ones you know it's going to be case specific on on each one of them is it a fiance visa right was it was it um was it a work visa was it a J-1 right was there a change of status and we can help you with that in a one-on-one okay and I know to family means different things in different parts of the world in America families are smaller and tight-knit we think of nuclear family parents and kids maybe a grandparent an uncle a first cousin but you know family in America is you know 10 15 people but a lot of the world family is 50 to 100 people you know very big web network of family so when Americans ask do you have family relations in the U.S how are they thinking maybe family what is the typical Visa officer thinking of of what is family yeah so okay let's start with the ds160 it says do you have any immediate relatives immediate relatives parents siblings spouse children right and substance is same same father and or same mother right okay that's it um then uh for for do you have just the general question do you have family in the U.S that one there's a little bit of wiggle room with a cousin right or an uncle uh and by cousin or uncle in in the American Standard we would mean a cousin would be your parents brother or sister's child not first not your not your parents cousin's child but no just the first cousin right um and if we're talking about uncles and aunts and uncles yes just your parents siblings we're not talking about family friends um or distant distant relatives we're just talking about those immediatives um and really you know sometimes people have those cousins or those aunts and uncles you don't really have a relationship with right maybe those big families maybe it's your your parents uh half half sibling or step sibling and there's no real relationship then I wouldn't really consider that like a family relation in the U.S if you've if you've got no type of interaction or communication with them yeah yeah sounds good thanks for clarifying that I know that can be confusing uh for some people but different cultural backgrounds all right another common denial rejection reason is insufficient funding proof uh a lot of people ask you know how do we show funding how much funding how can this be an issue for people during their visa interview yeah so let's talk about the insufficient funding proof so what we're talking about here is you're just not showing enough proof let's assume that someone does have a lot of funding right and and I don't just mean the amount of tuition and and fees and and expenses that are on the the I-20 right it might say 20 000 in tuition and then 15 000 in living expenses so somebody might say oh okay I'll start a new bank account transfer thirty five thousand dollars into the bank account and go to the interview okay you've shown a bare minimum and it looks weird that it's the exact amount that's on on the I-20 or maybe they've heard oh I need to show 150 percent of the the amount that's on the I-20 okay well then they come in with that exact bank account that's not what you want to do this is this is this is where you want to show the greatest amount of funding that you possibly can and that includes uh income if you're if you're young enough your parents and by young enough I mean many people in their 20s are still being funded by their their parents your parents income your parents assets if there's if there's real estate if there's anything like that that's going to go into it loans um scholarships every reductions intuitions mention that too if you say yeah I gotta well it's not a scholarship so I'm not going to mention it please let's not let's not shoot ourselves in the foot if you've got a tuition reduction for some reason you mentioned that yeah yeah and I was given a five thousand dollar tuition reduction sounds you know it's similar to a scholarship let's mention all the ways that you can you can you can count on funding because it sounds better it's kind of like let me draw an example if you're applying for a job and the job requirement says bachelor's degree but you have a master's degree when you apply for the job and they say oh well what's your level of Education would you say I have a bachelor's degree because that's the requirement for the job or would you tell them the higher level of Education that you have oh I have education that exceeds the requirement for this job I have a master's you would tell them the higher level of Education in the same way for funding you don't tell them yes I have the exact amount of of tuition that needs to be paid no you tell them much much more so they're much more confident in your financial stability mm-hmm Yeah the more above and beyond proof that you can give the more confidence a Visa officer is going to have about your situation um for the tuition and school fees for cost of living and expenses for you know any extra emergency kind of buffer kind of stuff so yeah the more the better I would say right yeah absolutely okay okay awesome and then I think again our last point we're going to talk about here about rejections is unclear home ties again this is another one that I think a lot of what results in the 214b rejection uh for people who want to come to America so Ben tell us about this unclear home ties so this this home tie is it's not something that that you know Rob As Americans we don't talk about oh what are your ties right this is not something we talk about it's just something that's written in the regulations and so the Visa officers uh will right well it's in the it's in the refusal notice that they'll give you it's written in the uh in the what their guidelines are for how they should do the interview the oh the applicant should demonstrate their home ties their ties to their home country um and what's going to take them back home what what it means is just anything that makes the Visa officer believe not facts right it's really just their their feeling do they believe that you're going to go to the U.S and then go back home after you complete your course of study that's all it means right those home ties it means what ties you to your home what's going to take you back home that can be anything right it could be uh finances it could be that your family has a really comfortable life back home right it could be that uh for a student even they don't need to have a residence for a student it could be well this student is uh is a very good student they've gotten into a very good school why would they want to be out of status and do something that was against the law where if you do that you can't you can't be on that that really uh let's say um excelling career track you're going to fall off that you're gonna have to do undocumented work no anything that shows them that you're going to stay in status you're going to go back home you're going to abide by the regulations that's a home tie and it could be different for anyone sometimes it could just be that I trust that student right because they seem Earnest and trustworthy I think okay even though there's maybe they're they they don't have any significant family in their home country right maybe they've gotten into the school and it's not even the best school and maybe they they're really struggling to pick up the funding but I sense that this student really has the resolve and the desire to go and Achieve and get that degree and make a better life for themselves by going back to the country I'll still give the Visa so it's really just based on that feeling yeah yeah it's this is this one's very subjective which is tricky um it's based on a lot of factors each situation is unique so I think you know you have to really think about your situation and your story and you know I feel like I like to coach people on Visa interviews about telling your story you know where have you been what are you doing now and where do you want to go kind of a three-part Simple Story you know and that where do you want to go that future the way you talk about the future really impacts this home tie stuff you know um where you know whether you have goals to work abroad to go back home how you want to use that degree and work experience so the way you talk about the future I think can really impact this so using the right wording is is important um because you want to make sure the Visa officer is understanding that you have home ties you're considering those things and those are part of your future plans in one way or another what was that correct then absolutely yeah that's that's exactly it awesome awesome well we're about to get to the Q a part thanks for hanging around friends but first again connect with us online on social media a lot of great content on Instagram we have our newsletters that you can get Great Value from as well and blog post but real briefly Ben I just want to tell our friends about Argo Visa coaching a great resource and tool for you guys uh if you've been rejected or want to make sure you Ace that high pressure interview so Ben give us a little more information about that yeah we are a network of over 20 former Visa officers that have worked all over the world doing visas we've done over a million Visa interviews uh over the course of all our our careers this is this is the place the only place where you can find an entire team or almost a consular section ourselves of Visa officers that are putting our experience to your use to help you pass your visa interview uh you'll get a customized review of your situation uh you'll meet with a former Visa officer who we identify as the one who has got the most relevant experience to help you get your visa issued and you'll meet with them and get coaching um you'll be able to get analysis of your situation a strategy for going into your interview and then mock interviews to help you implement that strategy and also uh Rob I think that you might have this address as well for the uh the Visa checkup which is uh it's an AI powered bot that was developed using all of this experience from all these former Visa officers that you can go into and it's going to help analyze your chances for getting your Visa uh and if there's anything that really stands out you'll see that okay it's going to give you a score that might indicate you need some help obviously this can't take in everything into account it's only about five minutes to get it all done but then at the end you'll see okay you know what are my chances how much do I need to uh to worry about my chances to get my Visa issued yeah yeah tell us about how this was developed and how this tool can really help people I'm going to do a little demo in the background yeah so we we put a lot of time into developing this uh putting together all the questions that we would ask as former peace officers um all the answers that we would most likely get how we thought about those giving different positive and negative weights to different answers for students we're talking about what school you're going to what major you're studying how you're going to fund it uh the country you come from any previous travel that you might have uh your fi your your your finances your parents finances if you have a loan so we do try to take as much into account as we can it's not going to be as precise as meeting with a Visa officer because maybe there's something that's unique right this isn't this isn't like chat gbt where you can just you know say anything you want to it this is much more direct right it's much more precise you're really getting just what we the former Visa officers have specifically put in here to analyze your case um so you'll you'll get a good idea it's going to be and it should be you know pretty quick and engaging and then at the end you know maybe you'll think okay I do want to get more help and then you can set up a custom meeting with a former Visa officer yeah let's see here [Music] um here the cost owning real estate and then at the very end you're going to get a score so we did a bunch of factors about your background education funding previous Visa immigration history and then you're going to get a score red yellow green again I just did this real quick threw some stuff out there but go ahead and put your situation in there see what you get and if you're in the red or the low yellow maybe a coaching call could be helpful for you guys to get you up closer to the green and let's note that that score is a 70 right out of 100 but still there's a high chance of being refused and that's because for me personally I don't want to go in knowing that there's a 30 chance of failure that's unacceptably high for me I want to put myself in that yep there's a 95 chance that I'm going to succeed box I want to I want to maximize my chance of success right you put in so much work uh to get to where you are in your career in your studies uh this is that step that could really uh change the the path of your academic career your professional career uh it's super important and it's that one hurdle you absolutely have to overcome right if you get rejected by one school you can change to another school right but you have to get that U.S visa to go to any of those schools in the U.S so got to make sure you you invest in that future yeah and if you guys want to use that free Visa checkup tool I put the link in the chat there's a link in the video description go check it out play with it see what happens and you might realize oh I'm pretty good to go and you can be very confident heading into your visa interview which is really helpful as well all right you guys have been awesome we've got a lot of great questions coming in again hey please ask your question one time if you ask the question again and again and again and again I'm going to ignore that because it just blocks up the chat so I'll ask you a question one time we're going to get to as many as we can and we're going to prioritize the Super Chat so if there's any super chats we're going to prioritize those ones first so uh let's get this party started so here we go citasia thanks for the super chat um I got rejected my Visa from the first time from India uh they've done their masters in UK and apply to the USA for a second Masters any tips on answering for why a second master's degree this is this is one of those unfortunate situations where you've got a lot of qualifications but it's that going from a masters to a masters that's causing you a problem right because the Visa officer is looking at that and thinking why sometimes the Visa officers lack a little bit of imagination right what I would do is I would say okay you've gotten a masters in the UK you're obviously a very qualified student maybe you've got a different plan for Masters to Masters but honestly I don't even need to know what it is I just know that I can trust that you're going to be a real student I would issue another Visa officer they will think okay well I don't know why you would go from Masters to Masters the normal path is Masters to PhD this doesn't make sense to me there's something that's going on that I don't understand and without trying to understand it because that wouldn't take a lot of time they will just refuse the Visa the key in your interview is going to be explaining why a second Masters makes sense right I'm assuming that you've got enough funding if you are needed a master's in the UK that that's not the issue uh you know you know custom personalized one-on-one I'd find out more but just from this question the way you're telling me it's why that second Masters and so it's not just one short answer it's not a brief answer it's going to be a story about yes I studied this first Masters because right but now I want to do something different right or maybe it's but the degree in the U.S is much more valuable much more useful right because it's you know in the US they're doing things at the top of the line and in certain Fields certain research whatever it is you've got to make a case for it you've got to convince them you've got to do sales and you're selling the idea that this is a good idea to the Visa officer right at the end of the interview you want the Visa officer to be thinking yeah that's a good idea to go and get that second Masters I I think that's a good investment of your time and money yeah why is this different than what you've already got why is this going to be a stepping stone or a pivot to either a new direction or an upgrade uh versus just doing the same thing again so giving that distinction is going to be really important all right uh Purity is asking I have an F1 visa interview this Friday I applied for the Green Card Lot and was not considered for one can that affect an F1 visa interview um and will the Consular officer see that or know about that if you did not get to the stage where you were selected you didn't win the lottery you weren't having a Visa a visa interview or anything like that then no that won't affect your your F1 visa interview at all lots of people apply for the the Visa Lottery and they're not selected if you were selected that's going to be a different story right depending on where you got in the process because at that point you're showing immigrants intent but uh if you didn't get to that point at all then it shouldn't have an effect great all right azim I was paroled in Houston to sign off on a c1d marine engineer visa to go back home for emergency I'm applying for F1 from India going to Duke University for Masters uh will the parole have any effect on refusal uh didn't have any overstay and followed everything okay so I would need more information about this getting getting paroled into the country like what type of Visa did you have did you have no visa and they just paroled you in because you would have had a c1d but you didn't you had an emergency and you weren't able to get one before you arrived in port on your vessel that there's a lot of details here that I would need to know because this is a very specific situation but here's what you should know about it the Visa officer will also have a lot of questions and doubts right because this all happened not at a Visa a Visa Opera a Visa Mill right and not at the Visa Consular section this happened at the Port of Entry and so they will have incomplete and Scattered information about what happened so you need to go in there and tell them exactly what happened if this is the only way that you know how to say it so far it's not enough right we're gonna have to look through those documents we're going to find out okay what was it what type of parole was this humanitarian parole what happened what documents do you have to prove this how can you concisely make the Visa officer realize that it was not a negative and that was completely within the regulations you've got a huge huge uh benefit and or advantage and highlight on your application which is Duke University top university for a master's degree so don't let whatever this was that happened cause you to get refused focus on you're a Duke Masters enrollee and what happened in the past was completely legal you can explain it all the Visa officer won't have any any doubts about whether that was legit or not good stuff thanks Ben um you may or may not know about this Ben but Sonos asking you know for people who've been refused um they're asking about when Visa slots are going to open uh more slots do you guys have any kind of Clues on those kind of things no that's uh that's just a location specific thing so in India they're doing this they're not doing it everywhere um and they don't announce when they're going to stop doing that it's just about the the load right the reason why they're doing this is because they think uh there's so many first-time Visa applicants that haven't had their interviews yet that they should get priority they should get a chance to have a visa interview if you don't have the opportunity to get a visa interview because you've got a prior refusal before your your Visa your program start date you can consider going to another country it's not always a good option and they're going to see that you were refused in India and if you're a borderline case let's say you go to Dubai if you go to Dubai to to apply they're going to look and if you've just got you know let's say you know an unknown University um and don't have strong finances and you refused in India the officers in Dubai will probably say well who am I to change this decision the officers in India understand Indian visa applicants more than I do but if they made a quick rash you know poorly considered decision in India and you're actually you've been accepted to a great school for instance the the Masters the Dual Masters question that we got earlier if you were refused in India because of the two Masters the second master's degree that's one where I would say absolutely you need to go to another post a very Cosmopolitan big post where they're doing a lot of Visa interviews like Dubai and go in there and and present those because I don't know why I was refused in India I'm going for a second Masters I already did my Master's in the UK my family can pay for all of it and now I want to do a career change I'm fortunate my family is is is uh well off enough to give me the opportunity to make a change in my academic career and this is my plan right a good officer in Dubai will say you know what yep I I don't have to trust what that India based Visa officer decided I'm gonna make my own decision an issue so you can you can get another chance outside the country great so Priscilla asks can a Visa be denied because an uncle is a sponsor um I think this reflects a broader question I get a lot Ben of uh someone who's not my parents an uncle a sibling or someone who's even in a different country who's a a non-parental relative how does that look and how can people talk about them as the sponsor if it's not your parents in the U.S it's it's not very common that a non-parent would pay for your education happens it definitely happens but it's not common that's not the common Story You're Going to Hear in other countries it can be much more common that there's uh in the extended family someone that's been very successful and they are kind of the benefactor for other members of the family but you need to explain the situation because just saying my uncle will pay that's not enough okay the first question that I would have is is this a real uncle or is this just some person that you're calling Uncle because they're your parents age um and and they're they're being nice to you right so it's my my father's brother is going to pay uh he is uh works in the in the ministry of the Interior um he's been very successful he's actually sponsored uh three of my cousins as well um uh because he's done very well and he wants the family to continue to get educated so he's paying for my education too right so that's a great way to explain how uh this this situation uh uh has come about if the uncles in the U.S that's different a lot of times people will have an uncle in the U.S then it's also is this a real blood relative Uncle immediate uncle or is it a more distant relative um and having somebody in the U.S that's sponsoring you that's a tie to the U.S that's something that shows oh wait there's something pulling you to the U.S rather than pulling you back home yeah thanks for sharing that um All Right Noor uh thanks for the Super Chat they said I was refused B2 Visa under 214b the Visa officer told me I suggest you travel but you can reapply I have already traveled to Turkey Iman and Saudi um Afghan and a permit resident Dubai where can they apply to now so any tips for this situation Afghan and permanent resident in Dubai and you applied where we don't see where you applied maybe was you planned in Dubai let's assume that you applied in Dubai being a permanent resident there that would be the place to apply you have a you have a special situation being uh Afghan being permanent resident in Dubai is great evidence that you have somewhere to go that's going to be a place to return to uh Afghans from Afghanistan uh that it's going to be assumed that they might not want to return there um if they're going to the U.S first so I would be highlighting this permanent residence in Dubai if you apply again uh highlight that you've got a permanent residence somewhere where you're going to return to what's going to draw you there why you're not why you shouldn't be considered to be the same as Afghan applicants who are applying after having just looked Afghanistan to apply in Pakistan for instance um you say the Visa officer suggested that you travel um what they mean by that is prior travel always is a good thing on your application if you've traveled outside of the country in return it usually shows okay well this is you know what we're trying to test for right well you travel to the US in return we say that you've already done it to Turkey Oman and Saudi Arabia um and so you've already done you know some good some good traveling um so really what I think it is is you had a timid Visa officer that saw that you were uh if you have an app I'm gonna assume you have an Afghan Afghanistan passport that you were had an Afghanistan passport and they really just didn't have that level of confidence so going in the next time you have to really stress the residents in Dubai and how that's permanent and how that's your home and how that's where you're going back to great all right so Neil is asking does university ranking matter such as like an Arkansas State uh this is a big question I've been getting a lot of messages about Ben is how important does the college ranking or the college brand name matter during the visa interview it matters it matters right and the reason is because let's let's take some extreme examples Harvard right if if you walk in with Harvard on your application I am not going to ask you any more questions I'll probably say oh Harvard congratulations and then because I'm trying to go as fast as possible my man my managers are trying to make me do as many visas as possible during the day so I know there's nothing that you're going to tell me that's going to make me refuse the Visa so I just say okay and I just type okay he's going to Harvard issue the Visa right um then there's there are schools in the middle right let's say some mid-tier schools that have a well-known name right let's say oh you're going to yeah Kansas State or oh you're going to um Auburn uh you're going to uh UC Boulder right these are all schools that have a really good name recognition and the Visa officers will see the name and think yes this is a this is a real school I know that this school is legitimate you have to submit test scores and application they don't admit they don't admit everyone and that's going to be legitimate right so that's a plus right you they they know that you've already been vetted by a school that they recognize and that that school has accepted your academic credentials right now we can go down another tier though to schools that they've never heard of right so a school that they've never heard of I'm not going to say a real one but let's use a you know a kind of a example of something let's say it's going to be uh middle middle New Hampshire uh Institute of technical studies okay I've never heard of this school it doesn't sound that great um I feel like you know there's a thousand there's maybe even two thousand universities I've actually tried to look this up there's no real count of the number of universities in the U.S but maybe I'll recognize yeah I'll recognize 600 University names when I see them right and then there's these others where I don't recognize them okay how small are they are they legit do they just accept everyone I don't know and let's go to the bot the the tier that's considered the least credible which is English language programs because they'll just accept anyone who wants to study English you don't have to pass a test you don't have to qualify you don't have to have a degree you can just enroll to study English so those different tiers are going to affect how much your Academic Program lends credibility to your application so the Visa officer if you've got a really top tier University focus on that make sure that they know that that's where you're going right um sometimes that there's good schools that don't necessarily have a good reputation but talk about why it should be known right sometimes if you're going to a branch School a student told me they're going to University I think it was Minnesota Duluth right and when the the police officers see you know a brand name School of the state school but then they see the branch school that's not when they recognize sometimes they think of that negatively but saying oh well I was playing the University of Minnesota I wanted to study this degree but because my undergraduate degree was in a different major University of Minnesota suggested that I applied to the Duluth campus instead because I would need to you know catch up because I didn't have the prerequisite courses oh okay that makes total sense right that's a good story for why you're going but you should keep in mind if you're going to University that has a lower ranking you're going to need to explain why it works for you it won't be it won't be the highlight on your application right just saying the name of the school won't be the highlight maybe it's going to be your finances maybe it's going to be that you've got a real plan you can tell them exactly why this makes sense for you don't do this don't tell them that Arkansas State University is one of the top universities in the U.S right and I don't mean this is a as anything bad towards you or to Arkansas State University but it's just not one of the best universities in the U.S sometimes students will tell me yes the you know Fullerton Community College is is the best program for computer science in California that's not that's probably not true I'm not an expert but it's probably not true so saying something like that makes you lose credibility with the VISA officer awesome great stuff great stuff another good one here from Mercy um I think this is gonna a lot of people are asking similar questions can someone go to another country to attend a student interview uh they're in Kenya there's a long waiting period you know to get a Visa slot you know that third country third party interviews um let's talk about that and help people figure that out yeah so if you're from kenyam and and everyone else can take this and apply it to their own situation if you're thinking about the same thing and the waiting time is a long time okay the best thing for you is going to be to apply in your own country because if you go somewhere else you're not going to have a a legit reason for being there right like we had our friend from Afghanistan who's a permanent resident in Dubai so he can apply there and it's it makes sense but if you're from Kenya and you're going to go to Dubai for instance and it's just for the visa interview they're going to say well I don't know anything about Kenya right I don't I don't know how to judge whether someone from Kenya has has good qualifications or not I don't know anything about the economy there and it makes it really hard for for them to reach that level of confidence that they need in order to issue the Visa so your first shot is this applying for the Visa in Kenya the wait time is long you get a visa interview on the books you schedule it and then you try to get an earlier spot there's two ways to get an earlier spot you can apply for an expedited Visa appointment and the way to do that the best way is within 30 days of your program start date in the appointment scheduling system you can request in this expedite and you're just very briefly right without without a lot of commentary say my program starts on this date but my visa interview is not until then so I request an expedite that's the only thing that they're basing it on is your program start date and when your interview is scheduled right if you say oh and my mom really wants me to be able to go to the US they don't care it actually takes away credibility from that request the second thing that you can do and they may approve it in many places though like in India they rarely get approved because everyone is is requesting expedites right there's so many that every like basically every appointment is already expedited then the second thing that you can do is you can log into the website and you can check and see if new appointments have opened up earlier sometimes the Visa the Visa section can go in and they can actually say okay we want to offer 400 appointments on Tuesday right well they can go in if they get a new person at post right they've got another resource that arrived they can go and say oh we're going to offer uh 480 now and then there would be more appointments that show up and they don't they don't alert you that hey you could get an earlier spot you just have to log in and check there are some Services uh I can't vouch for any of them specifically but I know people that have used them successfully where they they have people that just click refresh all day long and when an appointment becomes available they grab it and it's a paid service that that some some places will offer and it seems to work um so that's something else that you can try if it's if it's if it comes down to it awesome thanks for sharing those different uh scenarios Ben um I just want to say real quick to Jonas asking how to answer why did this University Ben did a great job earlier in our conversation today I've sent a lot of chat questions about how to answer why this University so go earlier watch the replay this will be live later and then in the middle of our webinar did a great job how to answer why this University so we're not going to cover that again because we've already covered that in depth so all right we got some other good questions here um someone had a previous l1a rejection in 2018 does that impact the F1 chances and also does having an age Gap matter you know if someone's maybe non-traditional a little bit older so what are some of those factors this one is looking complicated and I'm going to say with you you definitely need help because having an l1a rejected that's pretty serious right that shows that there was something really wrong with that application they they don't just they don't refuse L1 applications just on uh whim like if you have a previous B1 B2 or previous F1 rejection but now you've got a good program then that previous refusal is is going to have an effect but it's a smaller effect but if you've got a previous l1a rejection was this an illegitimate company or did you not have the qualifications did they suspect that there was something fraudulent going on I would need to know what's going on there because you need to be able to explain that rejection in a way that's not damaging to your current application or else that that could really hurt your your F1 visa application okay so yeah very complicated get some help if you want to uh have a a plan and a strategy um Angel's asking um is the bank's education loan section letter enough to show funding well if that's your only source of funding then yes that would be enough to show it but uh it's more talking about it let's talk about people that are funding 100 through loans right because many people will be funding 100 through loans uh some people might have families that actually can pay some but they decide to go for a loan instead some people told me well our family has uh some land uh but we don't want to sell the land so we're taking a loan right now um because that's just more convenient okay well you need to explain that because loans can have this effect they'll make the Visa officer think that your family doesn't have resources um and it makes them think that you have you're less likely to want to come back home so if you do have the resources make sure you tell them other people though may not have any family resources maybe it really is the loan is the only way that they could possibly get any funding for their education if that's the case you really need to focus on the academics right your plan for what you're going to study why you're going to study it how that's going to help you develop a career when you go back home because they're going to need to trust that that's what you're going to do so you can't go in and passively hope that they're going to make the right decision you need to go in there and and actively make them believe in who you are and what you're planning to do sounds good all right we got another one here um Jonas is asking my brother went by uh DV diversity um and graduated from UCL um now he's applying for his PhD my parents helped him for his tuition this person is now applying to UCL um how to answer that why uh question Rob do you know what UCL is I don't um I don't know Jonas if you're there tell us in the chat what UCL stands for maybe help us with that abbreviation I don't know if it's UCLA or uh University of Cleveland or something like that I'm not sure I saw and I thought University College London but I know it can't be that um maybe it's a maybe it's part of the California University system yeah yeah well one way or another let's leave the university out of it and and just talk about the DV so if your brother went on he said University of California okay University of California uh there's a lot of different branches and so uh the one that you attend is you know UC Berkeley UCLA Flagship schools uh you know UC Riverside UC Santa Barbara there's going to be a lot of them that might not have the the same weight um the the the better the reputation of the University that you're applying to uh the better your chances are of passing of showing your real academic credentials so in your case I'd say you want to definitely try to get into the the best most well-known most highly ranked school you can to help your your application because your brother having gone to the US on a diversity Visa does show immigrant intent in the family right so they're going to see okay immigrant intent in the family if your brother's on a DV when they ask about your brother because you're going to have to say on your ds160 my brother's in the U.S right and they say oh your brother's in the U.S how did he get there and you just say diversity Visa that's not where you want to stop right because that sounds just like you know intending immigrant maybe they're thinking about a desperate situation but he got a PhD okay so what I want you to focus on is that part so what's your brother doing in the in the U.S uh well my brother uh he actually he got a a green card through the diversity Visa but now he's getting his PhD in the U.S okay now we're thinking of something completely different we're not talking about some desperate situation we're talking about somebody who's excelling at the highest end of of the academic world that's what you want to focus on when you're talking about your brother there great great here's one interesting and a thing a theme I've seen recently a lot um Allison's asking about how they've applied uh for this fall semester and then they've gotten married to an American in between what kind of impact how they talk about that I feel like a lot of people have gotten comments about hey I'm married to an American I want to come to America either on F1 or our tourist visa you know how do I talk about that in the visa interview this is a very difficult one being married to an American the Visa officers uh it's very difficult to get them to see Nuance here they think that the inevitability is is then Living in America right um I as an American I've seen many Americans that are married to non-americans and they don't live in America but then it's still very hard you know if they just want to get a tourist of Esa the Visa Officer says no you need a marriage visa well if you're not intending to live in the U.S you actually don't need that marriage visa so uh you've now married an American it's going to be on your ds160 that you are married um and uh depending on the country you're from you know it could be very obvious that the name of your your spouse is going to be an American they'll say do you have any relatives in the U.S you're gonna have to say yes my husband is in the U.S they're going to have that question you're going to have to tell them and convince them that yes I'm married to an American but we have a plan and that plan does not involve permanently staying in the U.S it has to be believable it has to be specific is it because your husband wants to live abroad in your country is it because um you've got a great family business abroad that's taking you abroad because that's how you you know you're going to build your your future whatever it is they have to believe that you're not staying in the U.S permanently now the good news for Allison is that even if you fail at this F1 student visa interview the Silver Lining is that you've gone and you've told the Visa officers you're married to an American in that interview so then when you apply for your your marriage visa there's already a track record in the Visa record in that in their notes in their system where they see that oh you've been married to this person for a while so it learns credibility to your marriage so then if the goal is to get to the USM study and you can't get the F Visa because of it you will be able to get a marriage visa a green card through marriage and then get to the U.S that way right and and it's good because you're already establishing those credentials great great um okay is asking um she was rejected for her and F1 Visa uh her husband is working in the same city of her University I'm guessing in America um I'm having eight years of experience so when I pursue Masters and then come back to India any tips for someone um who's been rejected before still wants to come and study um what tips would you give someone to bounce back from a previous refusal well in this case um I I can't imagine why the Visa officer would refuse this Visa because if your husband's working in the same city you didn't tell us what your husband's status is but let's say that your husband's also from from your home country and I'm I'm assuming India yeah if your husband's also from India and he's in the U.S on an H-1B visa or an L1 Visa well you'd be able to get an L2 Visa or an H4 Visa very easily because you're you're the spouse right so refusing the F1 doesn't make a lot of sense because you can get that other Visa very easily um this look if if that is the case I would say that you probably interviewed with a very timid uh not very confident not very experienced Visa officer and that if you go into another visa interview and you're able to tell them when they say okay so what's your purpose of travel to the U.S and then you lay it out in a way that makes them logically make the connection that oh you could just get a spouse visa for an H4 right so you say uh yeah I want to go for an uh an F1 actually my husband is on an H-1B um and so I could get the H4 Visa but actually uh I can't study full-time on that so I want to get the F1 Visa so that I can be in full-time studies while I'm in the US because I don't want to just you know be sitting at home while my husband's working mm-hmm right because then they're putting it together like oh yeah she could just get an H4 right so you know the peace officers aren't hired for their critical thinking and their ability to you know logically deduce um these things so you sometimes you have to do it for them great then we've crossed the hour um do you have time for one or two more questions before we wrap up let's do it yeah okay awesome I've got there's a lot of good ones here I want to try and cover different topics um I like this one from Aisha um going for her first interview she's got a sister studying in the UK for a master's what's the impact of having a sibling sitting abroad somewhere else um with someone coming to the U.S I think it sounds good right because what are we looking for we're looking for people that are uh using visas well right doing what they say they're going to do if you say my sister is in the UK getting uh getting a masters oh well that sounds good to me because I assume family members will behave similarly so then I would assume that you too will do the same thing and go to the US and study for your master's degree so I would I would bring that up 100. great and then maybe a follow-up is if someone has had a Visa refused for a different country I've seen in the chats maybe they were going to Canada or Ireland or somewhere else in Europe and they were denied a Visa there will that impact their U.S visa chances or will the US Visa officer even know about that they might know about it from uh from Canada but most likely uh for for other countries around the world you know there's no there's no centralized system where every country in the world is sharing uh sharing data about Visa applications and who's been refused who's been granted you know that's that's kind of the hard line between countries is that you know this kind of information is not flowing back and forth so if you've applied to the UK and you haven't been issued um that's not going to have that's not going to have a a an impact on your F1 student visa interview unless they put a stamp in your Visa that says you know refused or something like that I know some countries will will do that someone in the chat said Ireland Ireland put a stamp in their passport yeah if Ireland has put a stamp in your passport that says refused okay the Visa officers are going to see that but they're not going to know any of the context they have no access to Ireland's system it's a completely different country right even though they both speak English completely different country they're not going to know why that happened they don't even know what they won't know what Ireland's regulations are about how they refuse visas do they put that stamp in everyone's Visa they're not going to know any of that they're gonna have a lot of questions they're going to have a lot of doubts you have to dispel those doubts they have to feel confident they know exactly why and it could be as simple as yeah I applied for the Irish Visa you know you just send all your all your materials there's no interview um and then I got a refusal the letter really didn't tell me why so I don't know why I was refused that that's a good explanation because that's what most people will come away from abusive refusal with not not really very much information what you shouldn't say is just no I don't know yes I applied I don't know right then they're thinking wait why I need to know what happened [Music] yeah all right and then nor is asking um what are good countries to travel to or how many countries should someone to travel to to have kind of that uh travel history be known as a genuine traveler you know any any tips for that for people who want to build kind of travel credibility for their profile if I remember correctly this is our friend who is Afghan who had applied in Dubai yes and so uh the thing about you know you say which and how many which is good you've got the right idea if you've traveled to every country in sub-Saharan Africa right wow that's impressive and you're obviously you know a great traveler and you could go to the you know I could expect you're going to travel to the U.S and then go back home but none of those countries have really strict requirements for getting the Visa so it's easier to go there right then uh traveling to even just one country that has a very strict requirements abiding by the terms of the Visa and then coming home can be a great indicator that you're going to use your USB so well so the UK the EU Australia Ireland right A lot of these places are places where if I see as a Visa officer that you've traveled to the UK for tourism and then gone home I'm I'm pretty confident that you're going to use your USB so well as well I like it so it's more about the the kind of difficulty of the country you've been to and the power of that Visa versus the total number of countries you've been to right awesome okay my friends that's going to wrap us up thank you for all the amazing questions I know that we didn't get to everybody's we tried to cover the ones that were common and repeated and especially relevant to student visas um again check out the Argo Visa tool um Ben he's uh going to be a great resource for you guys if you want to get a coaching call with him and others and um thanks so much for tuning in Ben what do you want to say to our friends as we wrap up here great questions I can tell everyone's putting a lot of importance on this really preparing well it's great I hope that I wish you the best of luck I wish you success in your interview and if you want help attaining that success we're here to help you all right everyone thanks for watching tune in have a great week have a great summer cheers everyone best of luck in those Visa interviews thanks for tuning in bye everybody

Channel: Chai & Coaching

Views: 45,126

Keywords:

Id: NyAWtWRFs6k

Length: 70min 31sec (4231 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 26 2023