 Insider tips and tricks to help you crack your F1 visa interview 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 on the US visa process. So make sure that you check them out. So this is the F1 visa series and this is the fifth and I think the final one in this series. I really hope that you've been watching all the videos and have found it useful. I have thoroughly enjoyed shooting them. So in this final video in this series, I want to share with you some insider tips and tricks. These are the things that I have seen work repeatedly in all my years of experience of working with students or working with clients. And today I want to share them with you. So before we start, I want to tell you that if you also want to work with me, you can book a consultation session with me. This will be a one-to-one session and you can also take a mock or a practice interview with me. The link for all of these things will be in the description box below. And with all of this said, let's jump into those tips. The first one is don't get alarmed and don't get tensed if documents are not being asked during your interview. So a lot of times I have seen that students get flustered and they get tensed because the visa officer did not ask them any documents during their interview. Now remember that in 90% of the cases, no documents are checked, no documents are asked. So if your interview is going well and you are able to communicate clearly with the officer and answer all his questions, just remain calm and carry on with your interview. Do not get tensed or flustered just because of the fact that the visa officer did not check or ask for any documents. Remember that the US visa process is an interview-based process. It is more of how you communicate with the visa officer, how you convey your answers, your reasons and documents are there just as a backup. So if your interview is going well and you have built that rapport with the visa officer, continue doing that, remain calm and do not get tensed if documents are not being checked. The second tip that I have for you and I think this is really, really important is that you need to time your answers. Now remember that the visa interviews are generally short. They are anywhere between 3 to 4 minutes. Sometimes of course there are cases where the interviews go on really long for 15 to 20 minutes, but those are really exceptional cases. A normal visa interview would be anywhere between 3 to 4 minutes, which means that for each of the answers that you need to give to the visa officer, you roughly have about 40 to 50 seconds. So you need to time your answers, you need to prepare your answers, practice it in front of a mirror and make sure that it's not too lengthy, it is not exceeding more than a minute. Because if this happens, there's a very good chance that the visa officer might cut you off in between and you might just miss conveying the most important part of your answer. So time your answers, make sure that it does not exceed the 40-45 second mark, practice it in front of a mirror and like I said earlier, if you want you can also take a mock interview with me. We will do this on a video call and keep it very similar to the actual visa interview and I'm sure this will really help you in your preparation. The third tip that I want to share with you is that your previous visa rejections do not really have much impact on your current visa interview. Yes, that's the truth and I'm sure this will come as a relief to a lot of you because a lot of times students come to me feeling really rejected because either they've had a B-1, B-2 rejection earlier or they have an F-1 rejection. Remember that your previous rejections are there but you do not need to worry too much about them, do not need to carry a hangover of your previous rejection in your current visa interview. Figure out where you went wrong, correct those mistakes and just move ahead confidently. The fourth point, it is not compulsory to have an education loan and it is not compulsory to have family property as a backup to get your visa approved. A lot of times students feel concerned that they need to take an education loan and they need to show a loan compulsorily to make sure that their funding is tight or they feel that they need to have a backup in the form of property or other long-term investments to again show as a backup option. The truth is while these two things certainly do help but it is not compulsory. The key here is to have enough funds as per your I-20. So your I-20 will tell you the amount of funds that you need for your education and the key here is to have 1.3 to 1.6 times of this amount to show to your visa officer. Now these funds can be in any form. They can be in FD, in your cash and bank balance, any liquid investments. It is not necessary that it has to be in the form of a sanctioned loan and it is also not necessary to have tons of property as a backup. And the last step that I have for you and I think this is a really important one is avoid paying generic. Yes, avoid giving generic answers and this essentially applies to your entire F1 visa interview. Remember this rule in mind whenever you answer any question asked by the visa officer. A lot of times I see students giving extremely generic answers such as US education is renowned world or US degree is supposed to be top notch. Now these are statements which are so generic that any person could go and you know utter it in front of a visa officer and this is precisely what you need to avoid. Avoid giving generic statements like this which can be told by anybody. You need to be extremely specific. So keep your answers specific to your profile, to your background, to your course and customize it as much as possible. Remember the more customized your answers are, greater are your chances of getting your visa approved. And this is especially important for questions such as why masters, why this particular university, what are your future plans and so on. So we actually have an F1 interview prep course and this course takes you through all these important questions which are asked in a visa interview shows you templates to prepare your answers and also has tons of sample answers you know to give you an idea of how to go about it. So do check out this course, the link for this course is also in the description box below. So guys these were my five general tips and tricks, some insider tips and tricks to help you clear your F1 visa interview. I really hope that this has helped you. I also have some free resources for you. So in the description box below you will find free PDFs. So one of them is a document checklist. So this will help you prepare all your documents and we also have a financial document checklist. So this will help you prepare specifically for your financial documents because funding is one of the most important questions which is asked in the visa interview. So do check out all of these links and if you have any more questions feel free to leave them in the comment section below. You can also DM me on Instagram. My Instagram handle is at shachi.mal. And yes like I said earlier do check out all the videos in the F1 visa series. I'm sure it's going to help you and if there's any other topic on which you would like me to make a video then do comment below and let me know. Also before I end we know that a lot of things have been happening with respect to the F1 visa seen in India due to the coronavirus pandemic and the embassies shutting for a few weeks. Now all these updates we are tracking closely and I will be bringing them to you right here on this channel. So make sure that you subscribe, press the bell icon and stay tuned. Stay safe, stay indoors and I'll see you in the next one. Signing off for now. Bye.