 The US Embassy in India recently conducted a Facebook live event and they covered a lot of important questions and a lot of new updates so this video is going to give you a quick summary of that event and also tell you the key takeaways keep on watching. Hi guys my name is Shachi and I'm a travel and visa coach on this channel you'll find tons of useful videos on the US visa process so make sure that you check them out. So on 10th June the US Embassy Delhi hosted a live Facebook event and in this event they announced something really important and that is about thousands of slots opening up for student visa interviews in July and August. So I hope by the time you see this video you've been able to take advantage of these slots which I think have opened up from 14th of June and you're able to get your visa appointment date started. Apart from this big news about slots opening up they also had a very detailed Q&A session it was almost a 45-minute Q&A session where they very patiently answered a lot of questions that were asked by students as well as the parents. So in this video I'm going to bring you the key highlights from this Q&A session and this is going to help you in case you missed watching the event. So I have divided all the key highlights into five different categories and we will go category wise and I'll tell you the updates. Apart from this we've also transcribed this entire event so the entire event and all the questions asked have been transcribed and put very neatly in one PDF. So this is the eighth page of PDF it took quite a bit of effort to make this but it's here for you. So again in case you missed the event or you want to know everything in detail do check the link in the description box it's a free PDF you can just click on the link download it and go through it. So let's get started and let's talk about the key highlights. So the first category is appointment booking and under appointment booking there are two three main updates which were covered in the Facebook line. The first one is that if your appointment was cancelled previously right so let's say that you had a visa appointment in March or April and that got cancelled due to the Covid situation. There is no special treatment or no preference that is going to be given to you. You will have to follow the regular route and apply for a new appointment just like everybody else. The second update is about emergency appointments so I know that in the last few weeks there have been a lot of talk about emergency appointments and a lot of students have you know trying to get an EA 60 days before they call it start date but in the Facebook live they mentioned that since they're planning to open thousands of slots right regularly over the next two months they wouldn't really be a need to apply for an emergency appointment which means that if you're going to US for your fall semester you will be able to get a regular appointment from 14 June and hence an EA would not really be required. The third update is word dealing with scheduling errors. So a lot of students put forward this point that you know in the last few weeks whenever they try to book an appointment either the site crashes either it freezes or you know you need to constantly refresh the page because the page is not loading and eventually they get blocked. So they accepted that there was there were some technical glitches and this is not something that they can resolve immediately. What you need to do is to be patient right since a lot of slots is being released getting an interview date will be possible it will become easier. So you just need to pace out and time out your attempts do not refresh too many times do not get yourself blocked. And the fourth update under appointment booking was about the interview locations. So they encourage students to book an appointment in the embassy which is closest to their home and the rationale behind this is to avoid unnecessary traveling and they said that since appointments are going to open in all the embassies across India it would be possible to get an appointment at an embassy which is closer to your home. But this said in that they did not stop students or rather there is no rule which says that you cannot travel and give an appointment in some other embassy. So just in case you're not able to find an appointment closer to your home feel free to book an appointment wherever you're getting and travel to give that interview. And the last update under appointment booking is about cancellation. So I think a lot of you have been worried whether you know appointments will get cancelled again and even I've got a lot of DMs asking students that what do we do if you know we get a new appointment one and that also gets cancelled. Well they sort of gave a reassurance about this and said that embassies are now back to functioning normally the COVID situation has improved drastically and for the next two to three months at least you know they will be honoring all the appointments so you can expect that there won't be any cancellations. So the next category that we're going to cover is travel and the first update in this category is about parents being able to accompany their child or rather the student to US. So a lot of parents asked whether they could apply for a B2 visa so that you know they could travel with their kid and drop them off and help them settle down and very I think clearly they said that no it's not going to happen this year right because of the COVID situation they're not really issuing B2 visas and also they do not want to encourage people to travel when the travel is not really essential. So it's very clear that this year the students will have to go alone no parent will be able to accompany them to US. The second update is about quarantine and vaccination requirement so they do not have any country buyers or you know state buys regulation for quarantine or for vaccination requirement this is going to vary I spurred the university so like I think this is something which even I have mentioned many times in the video that it is best to check these requirements from your university so do check with your university well in advance what are the quarantine regulations what are their vaccination guidelines and follow that it's not going to be the same for everybody it is going to vary as per your university rules. So some universities are not really accepting the Indian vaccines and they want the students to get vaccinated again if that's the case then you'll have to make arrangement for that and if not and your university you know just wants you to come in quarantine then just follow the guidelines that they've asked you to. The next update and the travel is about the travel date so they made it very clear that students who are going for the fall semester right that is essentially if your course is starting after the first august you are allowed to travel to the US 30 days before your college start date so let's say that your course is starting on first august that means you are allowed to travel after first of july and for the fall semester you do not need to apply for NIE you do not need to apply for national interest exemption you are automatically covered under that but if you're planning to go for the summer semester right and you have any plans of attending the summer semester in that case you will need to apply for a NIE separately which essentially means that if you call it start date is before august 1st you will need to take the NIE route and the last update under travel was for students under OPT and CPT so they said that if you're under OPT CPT and again if the date in which you're going to resume your course is after august 1st right your start date is after august 1st the same rules would apply to you you are also covered under NIE and you can travel 30 days before the start date so the next category is university and admission related so here they covered a point about service fee so some students asked that you know they paid the service fee last year because they were due to start their course start their college last year itself and of course you know the admissions got deferred so will the service fee be valid so they mentioned that service fee is actually valid for only one year so in case you have paid last year you will need to pay again but i also felt that they weren't really sure while answering this you know there was some sort of internal discussion as well going on so it would be best i think to check with your university once and just clarify with them whether you really need to pay the service fee again the second point which was covered was about GRE and TOEFL scores and i think here again a lot of students you know are confused and they are actually worried because either they haven't given a GRE TOEFL or they have a GRE TOEFL but the score is low so they're not really sure what to do about it so in the facebook live they clarified that if your university has waived off GRE TOEFL right if they have not asked it as a requirement then it's completely fine you do not need to give a GRE TOEFL for the sake of the visa interview the next category is interview related and before i tell you the updates in this category i will quickly like to tell you that if you have your visa slot booked your appointment date has started and you are in the preparation mode then there are a lot of resources on this channel which will help you prepare you can either book a consultation session with me right it'll be a one-to-one session and i can help you structure your answers clear your doubts get your documents ready if you feel that you have prepared your answer and you would really like to see you know check your preparation level you can take a mock interview with me this will again be done on a video call we also have an fnprep course so this course has modules templates sample answers and this will help you get ready for your interview it's a DIY course so the link for all of this is in the description box below make sure to check it out all right so coming back to the interview related updates first one was about the documents required so somebody asked that what are the documents that i really need to carry for the interview so he was pretty brief about it and he just mentioned passport i-20 service fee receipt of course these are the essential documents and he also mentioned that you would really need documents to show your financial proof so i have said many times on this channel that financial proof documents are in fact the most important documents for your fn visa interview we have an entire video which talks about how to prepare the funding aspect so do check out this video and in the link below you'll also get the financial document checklist so you can click on the link and download it the second update that they covered was about i-20 so people asked whether you know a physical copy of i-20 would be required as was the norm in the previous years but this year again due to covid situation things have changed and just the online copy of your i-20 would be sufficient you really don't need a physical copy the third update was about mrv fee so again here they mentioned that the mrv fee basically the fee to you know attend your visa due is usually valid for a year but this year they're working on it and they're trying to give some extension to people who have paid mrv fee last year but could not attend the visa interview again they were not really clear about it so in case you also have a similar question and you're wondering whether you need to pay the mrv fee again do drop a mail to the helpline email right i'll mention the helpline email right here and you can drop a mail to them and clarify whether you need to pay the visa fees again and the last point that they covered under the interview category is about vaccinations so no preference is going to be given to students who are vaccinated and you know who are coming to attend the visa interview the way they will assess you will just be the same as everybody else also no covid test is required to attend the visa interview i have got a lot of games asking from students asking whether they need to show a negative covid test to attend the visa interview and the answer is no you do not need one and the last category that we're going to cover is about the other visas so they also gave updates about other visa categories and i'll just tell you the key highlights here the first one is that dropbox applications are expected to start soon and the timeline they mentioned is within a week for h1b visas and the same would hold good for even c1d visas so dropbox applications for h1 and c1 is expected to resume soon which i think is a relief to a lot of people the second update was about m1 visas so m1 visa holders can also travel if the college start date is after august 1st and they can also travel 30 days before the college start date so essentially the same set of rules as f1 would also apply to m1 j1 visa holders especially those who are going to work in the medical field can also apply for their visa and plan their travel post august but they didn't mention that j1 visa holders would need to apply for a national interest exemption but they also added that applying for it would be fairly simple and all you need to do is drop a mail to the embassy and they would give you one also no clarity was given as to when the presidential proclamation and the travel ban on tourist and on other visa categories would be lifted so i think he mentioned that this was about his pay grade which means that he he really doesn't have much information about it however they did add that they have started processing immigrant visas in small quantities and these are going to just keep increasing in the coming few weeks which means that in the coming few weeks we can expect more and more visa categories to open up so these were the key highlights and oh my god there were a lot of them i felt like i was reading a news bulletin but a lot of you asked for an update video from this facebook event and here it is so if you missed that event or you're just too lazy to watch a 60 minute video then here is this video and this has brought you up to speed with everything that has happened and like i said we also have transcribed the entire event so for a detailed explanation of everything that was discussed do download your free pdf the link is in the description box we have a lot more useful videos coming up in the f1 visa series so make sure that you subscribe and hit the bell icon so that you don't miss out on any of these videos and there are more useful resources for you the first one that i want to tell you about is the f1 workshop so we have finished four of these workshops and they have been tremendously useful to people who attended it think of it as a crash course for your visa interview so we have two more workshops remaining so if you haven't registered for the one yet go ahead and do that apart from this if you want a more personalized preparation you can take a consultation call with me and if you feel that you've prepared your answers but you aren't really sure of how you're sounding and whether you know the answers are good enough you can also take a mock visa interview with me all of this will be done on a video call and the mock interview will really give you a feel of the actual visa interview apart from this we also have an interview prep course so this is a diy course and there are videos templates sample answers to help you get ready so all this good stuff all the details is in the description box make sure that you check this out if you have any more questions feel free to leave them in the comment section below you can also DM me on instagram and yes i think that's all i had to say signing off for now i'll see you in the next one bye