My S chose Comp Sci major at a large public Univ and was issued an I-20 for Fall '16. But he has changed his mind and wants to change to Comp Engg, but the SEVIS co-ordinator says once the I-20 has been issued, one can’t change the major. This is baffling because admission to major is purely an academic decision and SEVIS should have nothing to do with it. Does anyone have anything to say about this?
NO, he can only change it after he’s registered and enrolled at the university. In fact he may well be asked about his major during his visa interview.
That he may be asked about his major in the visa interview is fine… I am only talking about a situation where he wants a fresh I20 to be issued BEFORE he even applies for the visa
he can ask for a new I20, but when he goes to his visa interview, his major choice and what’s on the I20 have to match. At that point, he can only switch once he’s on campus. He can’t switch between visa interview and on campus arrival.
Yes… thats what I also think. But this particular SEVIS officer is refusing to issue a fresh I-20 even though the first one has not even been received by us yet… still in US local address
@MYOS1634 Do you have some official link or something that I can point to her…?
He can change his major AFTER his visa comes out. That’s how I did when I changed my major.
Any change in major AFTER enrollment means you are subject to various academic requirements like GPA etc.If you do it before enrollment, there is the advantage of being evaluated simply as a freshman admit.
^OP is talking in terms of SEVIS, which is different from what you’re talking about and applies to administrative rules at various colleges, not visa rules for internationals.
Your first move would be to change your son’s major on school records. What steps would he need to take to declare or change his major with the registrar’s office? (The university itself may not allow incoming students to declare or change their major before they arrive on campus.) AFTER that has happened, you would reach out to the DSO to update the SEVIS record and they would print a new I-20.
Though to be honest, I don’t understand your urgency. I cannot think of a single reason why the major in SEVIS matters at this point. (It will matter later for OPT reasons, but that’s about it.) He doesn’t even need to insist that he would major in the same thing during his visa interview. Students in the US change their major all the time and it’s perfectly fine to start college undecided.
Please understand that it’s easy to update a major in SEVIS after the student has enrolled. He would not need a new student visa. Your DSO will print your son a new I-20 after he officially changes his major, and he would keep the new I-20 with his passport instead of the old I-20. That’s all.
^ Simple. As @advent mentioned, the academic requirement to change the major AFTER a semester can be onerous, like in the present case, which requires certain minimum GPA and available space. However, if a change is requested and granted by the college prior to enrollment, the only requirements are the Freshman admission criteria, which S has already met.
By the way, here are the official SEVIS instructions for DSOs if you want to poke around in them:
https://www.ice.gov/doclib/sevis/pdf/SEVP_DSO_Training.pdf
https://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/sevis-help-hub
None of those reasons is in any way related to your son’s SEVIS record. It sounds like you want to change his major with the registrar’s office, but there’s no urgency to get it updated in SEVIS.
@b@r!um In effect, what you are saying is that the college can easily re-issue the Form I-20 mentioning the new major and mail it across - so S can submit the same for applying for his visa… Right…?
I know that several fields of the SEVIS record are easily updated anytime - e.g. the student’s name, date of birth, or program dates. I do not know if this applies to the major as well.
That aside, the DSO is not allowed to update the major to something that would conflict with official college record. If the registrar has your son down as computer science or general engineering major (i.e. undeclared within the College of Engineering), the DSO cannot just enter electrical engineering into SEVIS. That would be fraud.
Are you even positive that your son has a declared major already? Most universities start all new students out as “undeclared” within a college (e.g. liberal arts or engineering), regardless of the major that was stated on the application for admission.