Applying for and obtaining OPT
Having just gone through this ~80 day process, I am documenting it here. I applied for OPT on April 17 2023 online at the USCIS website, and recieved the notice of receipt the same day. I obtained the approval notice on July 15 online and got the physical EAD card on July 22, 2023.
About OPT status
For employment post graduation, it’s relatively easier to get the OPT work authorization than other types of visa including H1B, so on. It also allows 90 days of unemployment during the OPT period and volunteer work and internships also count as unemployment which is not true on other employment visas. However you can only use it post graduation and the length of work is defined for one year with an optional 2-year extension given to STEM majors. This is not long, but gives ramp time to obtain a different visa.
Getting started on the OPT application
Each school office has their own writeup of the exact instructions and they change all the time, so I won’t list the details. However the basic steps are to gather the following documents as scanned copies before you submit the application:
- photo that conforms to US passport regulations
- i94 document
- all current and past i20 documents (make sure they are signed)
- copy of passport
- filing fee ($420 in my case), can be paid by credit card
CMU Office of International Education also separately required passing an OPT quiz that confirms that you understand the rules (maybe this is CMU specific?) and a signed form from your academic advisor.
Timeline
One thing I didn’t fully understand is that around spring, the approval wait time gets longer as everyone is submitting their cases. The USCIS site provides an estimate of how long it will take, but this can stretch out due to this seasonality and if you get a request for further information. This can be very nerve wracking as you don’t know when you’ll obtain the approval and can start your job.
I used the OPT timeline site to track the card and I checked it daily. Most of these tracking sites rely on scraping the case numbers in order to check the status of the EAD aproval, so they can be considered a subsample of all of the cases.
Overall, here is my final timeline:
