<p>Some colleges ask whether I plan to stay in the USA after graduation or to leave the country. Assuming that I'll seek a full ride from that college, what answer will it prefer and why? BTW, I'm talking about an undergraduate study.</p>
<p>You plan to return to your home country. Period.</p>
<p>What you can say is that you hope to be able to take advantage of the OPT after competing your studies, before returning to your home country.</p>
<p>If you say anything different, you will not get your student visa. The visa officers are not allowed to issue student visas to people who aren’t planning to go home after their studies and OPT.</p>
<p>Thx mom, you’re clarified it for me till I’ve made a stupid thing :{)</p>
<p>Sorry for hijacking the thread, but what if you want to go to grad school? Can you tell them that?</p>
<p>It’s safest to say you want to return to your home country. Any other answer might be perceived as an attempt to stay in the US indefinitely, something obviously immigration officials don’t want to see.</p>
<p>There are lot of moms out here 
I agree with you that it’s reasonable that all students should answer that they’ll return home. But just of curiosity, doesn’t it sound ridiculous, for an education institution or/and US consulate, when somebody from a country where the average salary is, let’s say, $2,000 a year, one toilet per 500 people, and a constant odor of s**t in the city’s air, tells them that he’s going to return home? Pardon my French =)</p>
<p>Foreign students in the US rarely come from areas of abject poverty. And if they do, they’re usually from families that have the one toilet.</p>
<p>but what if as a college senior you get offered a good job by some company or something, then would it be possible to stay?</p>
<p>you’re asking a different question - a speculative one. When you’re asking for a student visa, the FACTS are:
- do you intend to be a student? Or, do you intend to use the student visa for some other purpose?
- is your primary reason for going to the US getting a degree? or is it to find a job?
In order to get a student visa, you must intend to be a student first and foremost, and going to the US to get your degree. Speculation about “what if…?” does not enter the equation.
Is it possible someone will offer you a job? Yes. But 4 years before graduation, that’s not a fact. The only reality that’s for certain is that, if you get an American degree, you’ll easily find a job in your country.
So you’re going to the US to study and get a degree. Not to get a job or whatever because you won’t get a STUDENT visa if you primary goal is to get a job.</p>
<p>well if I were to be ask whether I’m going to stay in USA upon graduation. What should I answer? I will say/answer the truth</p>
<p>It’s never certain that you will easily find a job in your home countries, such guarantees only exist under socialism. Four years is a lot of time, your home country’s economy might collapse and the once-good job prospects would be gone. And I think many people in this forum are confusing the expectations a school has vs. immigration officers. The school was probably asking the question to get a larger feeling who the student was, not to root out a potential illegal immigrant. Therefore, I think the best idea would be to write the truth and not a plagiarized paragraph from the website of your country’s US embassy.</p>
<p>Colleges and universities want to believe that they are contributing to the improvement of lives all around the world. They are not in the business of capturing foreign talent for US employers. You do yourselves no good by saying that you intend to remain here.</p>
<p>Answer that you hope to find a sponsor for the time provided under the OPT limits after graduating, and that you intend to return home after that. </p>
<p>If in the future you do find an employer that will get you an H1B (work) visa, or marry a US citizen/permanent resident, or your country has a revolution and you qualify for asylum or TPS, well that will be another thing entirely. Don’t speculate about those possibilities now. Plan to return home.</p>
<p>If a US degree would be useless in the job market in your country, don’t come here to study. Study there instead. If your purpose in studying outside your country is to get a job and never return, check out Australia and Canada. Staying in those countries as an immigrant after finishing as a university is much easier than in the US. And in many cases their universities are cheaper.</p>
<p>Ok, I have a different question - how is any 18 year old supposed to know what he/she wants to do after graduation? I am a freshman and I’m still undecided on my major, let alone on my post-graduation plans. Maybe I’ll stay in the US. Maybe I’ll end up in a different country. Who knows. I don’t know much (if anything) about the usefulness of a US degree in my country, but the one or two articles I read said that a foreign degree is of little use - most people assume that by coming back, you failed at your life abroad. Not to mention that I would struggle to get my qualifications recognized. Whatever - I came to college to get an education and have a good social experience, not to speculate what the House is going to do with the Senate’s immigration bill and how US immigration law will look like in four years from now. No one knows whether the US government will even be functioning a week from now.</p>
<p>If you read the thread, you’ll see that you are asked NOT TO speculate. Indeed, no one can predict the future.
If you’re going to college in the US to study and learn, then don’t talk about jobs etc. If they ask you what position/career you’re interested in, dont say “I want to be a researcher, but only in the US” or “I want to be an engineer in the US”. Their question isn’t about where, it’s about WHAT.
You can also talk about gaining experience via OPT as HappyMom1 said but you cannot say “I’m going to college in the US to find a job there” because you’d be flagged as potentially trying to abuse your visa. Colleges are interested in getting students. Are you applying to be a student, and will your primary concern be studying? Then don’t talk about castles in the air , your life 5 years from now as you’re dreaming it today.</p>
<p>i agree with the posts of happymomof1 and others. you need to convince the government that you intend to return to your country. some courses of study are of much greater value with a post graduate degree. and it would make sense for you to take advantage of that. on a form that gives you no opportunity for explanation, you must say you intend to return. if there is a line to explain, add something simple like “i intend to return to my country after finishing studies undergraduate/graduate”. </p>
<p>i believe that some students wonder about filling out forms over and over again saying that they intend to return, then later getting a job opportunity that allows them to stay legally. wouldn’t all those previous forms and statements-to-the-contrary prejudice their visa chances later on ?? the answer is no, as long as you have stayed ‘in status’. it will normally be the company that applies on your behalf. but even if not, as an immigration lawyer once told me, “that’s the greatest thing about this country: you can always change your mind.”</p>
<p>meanwhile, tell them you’ll return.</p>