 How to book an emergency appointment for your F1 visa? All the steps explained keep on watching. Hi guys, my name is Shachi and I'm a travel and visa coach. On this channel, you will find tons of useful videos in the US visa process. So do check them out. We also have an F1 visa series. So this is a set of five videos specifically focused on the F1 visa. So if you haven't checked that out, make sure that you do that. So coming to today's video, so we all know that the embassies in India are currently closed due to the COVID-19 situation in India and it is expected that they will probably open by, you know, the 1st or mid of June. But the good news is that student visas are being given the priority and they have issued various statements saying that they will ensure that students get their visa before the fall semester begins. Another thing which is being specified again and again is that students are also allowed to book emergency appointments in case normal visa appointments are not available. So in this video, we're going to be talking everything about this. I'm going to be explaining a few pointers that you need to keep in mind before you book your emergency appointment and also tell you the exact steps that you need to follow to book your emergency appointment. So let's get started. So let's start with the pointers that you need to keep in mind before you book your emergency appointment. The first one is that your emergency appointment date needs to be in that 60-day window of your college start date. So let's say that your college is starting the first week of August, then book your emergency appointment by first week of June so that you are in that 60-day window. The second point to keep in mind is that emergency appointments are given only once. You get only one chance to book an emergency appointment. So make sure that you are thoroughly prepared. You have your DS116 place, you have all your documents in place, your interview preparation is complete before you book your emergency appointment because there's just one chance at it, so you need to give it your best. Now, if you want my help in preparing, you can either book a consultation session with me or you can even take a mock interview with me. A lot of students have done this and it's benefited them. The details of this will be in the description box below. The third pointer to keep in mind is that before booking an emergency appointment, you need to have a normal visa appointment in place. So a normal or a regular visa appointment needs to be booked before you can request for an emergency appointment. So go ahead and book your normal visa appointment for whatever date you're getting be it in 2021 or 2022. It doesn't matter. But before you book your emergency, make sure that you have your normal visa slot in place. And the fourth and the last pointer to keep in mind is that emergency appointments will be in the same location as your normal visa appointment. So let's say that your regular visa slot is for embassy in Delhi, then emergency appointment will also be in the Delhi embassy and you cannot change this location. So with these pointers in mind, now let's look at the exact steps that you need to take to book your emergency visa appointment. The first step is to log into your account. So when you log into your account, you will see that on the left hand side, you have a series of options. And one of these options is to request for an emergency appointment. So click on that emergency request tab and that will take you to a whole new page, a whole new form, which will allow you to request for your emergency appointment. The second step is to fill out this form. So on this form, there are two to three questions that are asked and you need to fill this out. So you need to give your tentative travel date. You need to select your reason for emergency. So in this case, you can select that you're a student or exchange visitor. And third, it gives you a box wherein you need to explain what is your emergency. Now, a few pointers to keep in mind while filling out is that do not put it in a para, put it in bullet points, make about two to three bullet points. The first bullet point, you can list which university you've got an admit and which is the course. The second bullet point, you can give the start date of your course and as a third bullet point, just give a brief explanation. So you can basically write here that your course is starting in first week of August and you need to be in your campus or you need to be in that particular city about two weeks before that so that you can self quarantine yourself and follow all the regulations. Hence, you are requesting for an emergency appointment. There's also an option to include attachments. So here, this is not compulsory but you can include your I-20. You can include your admit. You can include any other email conversation that you might have had with your university. So once you complete your form, you just click submit and this basically completes the procedure for requesting for an emergency appointment. After this is done, you need to wait for an email from the US Embassy and this generally takes about two to three days. So if your emergency request is accepted, you will get an email from the US travel docs within two to three working days. And this is an extremely important email and there are a few things that you need to keep in mind. Number one is that the email will clearly mention that you need to reschedule your visa appointment date. So from whatever date you've already got it, you need to reschedule it to an earlier date. Second, the email will tell you a deadline or rather give you a validity for this date. So it'll tell you that you need to book your new appointment within this particular date and this is extremely important. Please be very careful, be very mindful and make sure that you reschedule and get your new appointment before this expiry date. Remember that emergency appointments are only given once and you also have the option to reschedule your visa appointment only once. So you need to be extremely careful, extremely mindful when you do this. And once you are done rescheduling and once you complete this process, you will get a new confirmation mail. Take a print out of this and carry it with you for your visa interview. So guys, this is all about how you can book your emergency appointment for F1 visa and like I told you earlier, this chance only comes once. You can only book your emergency appointment once and given that in the current scenario, it's anyway quite difficult to get a visa appointment. I would advise you to be very well prepared before you go ahead for your visa interview. So make sure that you keep everything ready and even before you book your emergency appointment, keep your DS160 ready, keep all your interview preparation, all your documents ready because like I said, getting a slot is difficult. So once you have a slot, you need to go there, smash that interview and get your F1 visa. So if you want my help in preparing, you can do two things. You can either book a consultation session with me or you can take a mock interview with me. Both of these things are really going to help you in your preparation journey. We also have an F1 prep course. This is an interview prep course and this has 11 modules which will take you through all the important questions which are asked in the interview, show you templates to prepare your answers and also it has tons of sample answers. So the details for all of these is in the description box below. Make sure that you check them out. Thank you so much for watching and I really hope that you all are staying safe, staying indoors and taking care of yourself and your family. I'll see you in the next one. Signing off till then. Bye.