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Any other international students (on F1 visas) on here? What was your process with OCI like?

I have good stats at a lower T-14 and (probably -- still no answer from a few places) struck out at OCI despite having several CBs. While there could be many other factors affecting my results, I'm wondering how much being an intl student played into it.

Were you ever asked about your visa status? If so during screeners or CBs? I struck out also, but US citizen with foreign accent. Overall, decent stats at lower t14.

Anonymous User wrote:Were you ever asked about your visa status? If so during screeners or CBs? I struck out also, but US citizen with foreign accent. Overall, decent stats at lower t14.

OP here. Yeah, I was. 4/7 CBs had me fill out forms asking directly. 2 out of remaining 3 asked me during interviews.
I didn't keep note of screeners because there were so many (~21).

I think it probably depends on the size of the firm/market. Big NY firms for example are not going to care so much about your visa status because they sponsor H1B visas all the time, have the mechanisms all in place and if for whatever reason you don't get the H1B it doesn't really affect their incoming class size because they expect a few people won't come back for whatever reason. I went through OCI in 2010 as an F1 and no-one cared and those that did as were asking more out of a 'so why did you end up in america?' curiosity rather than asking about visa status.

However, H1Bs are expensive and risky because you can miss the cap, be denied for many reasons etc etc. Thus, smaller firms with, say, 5 SAs who want to retain them all are going to be more averse to the risk of having someone with uncertain visa status.

sophie316 wrote:I think it probably depends on the size of the firm/market. Big NY firms for example are not going to care so much about your visa status because they sponsor H1B visas all the time, have the mechanisms all in place and if for whatever reason you don't get the H1B it doesn't really affect their incoming class size because they expect a few people won't come back for whatever reason. I went through OCI in 2010 as an F1 and no-one cared and those that did as were asking more out of a 'so why did you end up in america?' curiosity rather than asking about visa status.

However, H1Bs are expensive and risky because you can miss the cap, be denied for many reasons etc etc. Thus, smaller firms with, say, 5 SAs who want to retain them all are going to be more averse to the risk of having someone with uncertain visa status.

Hmm. Guess something else might be at play in my effed up cycle then. What a s**tshow.