US$535 in government fees, several months of paperwork, and a decision reached in under five minutes by someone who has already made forty that morning. The F-1 interview is the most compressed assessment in international education, and almost all of it turns on whether your funding answer is two sentences long or two paragraphs.
In preparation
The full guide is still being written.
We publish a guide once every figure in it has been checked against the government page it came from — and not before. The summary above is the whole of what we are prepared to state on this subject today. The official sources this piece will be built on are listed below, and until it is finished you are better served reading them than reading a draft of ours.
If this is the question in front of you now, put it to an advisor rather than waiting for the article. The answer for your file is always more specific than the answer for a page.
Built on these sources
SourceU.S. Department of State — Student visaStudy in the States (DHS) — Paying the I-901 SEVIS feeLast verified September 2026
