WalnutKernel

Hello, it's me again. I have a question that I bet has already been answered, but I really can't find such an answer anywhere. I graduate a year ago from my undergaduate institution (on F1 visa), then I went on to graduate school. I left the U.S. for the summer, but I came back and started the new program within 5 months of graduating, on the same visa. I transferred my SEVIS record to the new university. My new i20 shows the same SEVIS ID as the old one. Now I am renewing my F1 visa, do I need to pay the sevis fee again and/or do I need to somehow change my SEVIS ID?

I see, thank you for answering.

Hello, I am applying to renew my F1 visa after graduating and switching to a PhD program. I filled out my ds160 application, and then I went on to the American embassy in my country's website to schedule an interview. The last question to fill out is "Qualifying statements applicable to citizens or nationals of the countries that are part of the Visa Waiver Program (VWP)". There are three option: a) I am a citizen of a visa waiver program and travelled to the US before on ESTA b) I am from a non VWP country, but I have been issued a U.S. visa, and have had my fingerprints taken c) None of the above My situation is that I am from a VWP country (which is also where I am applying for the renewal and where I applied for my first visa), but I have not travelled to the U.S. on ESTA. However, I have travelled on an F1 visa, had my fingerprints scanned and all that. By playing around with the website, I deduced that this interview determines the eligibility for a visa waiver (*). It seems logical to me that if having a visa+fingerprints is enough to grant a waiver to a non VWP country citizen, it should be enough to grant it to me as well. It is very important for me to get an interview waiver because I only have a limited amount of time to renew my visa, and the waiver would speed up the process. (*) I deduced this because when I select either option a) or b) and check my application's details, the flag "interview waiver" is on, while it's off if I select c)