Students may apply for Post-completion OPT up to 90 days before completion of studies and up to 60 days after.
We don’t recommend that you delay your application. If you’re confident that you will graduate in that semester, do not wait until you’re close to graduation or after your graduation.
If you wait until you’re so close to graduation or even after graduation to apply for OPT, you may have fewer days left on your OPT (or you probably call it an OPT visa).
For Example, a non-STEM degree student with 12 months of OPT work authorization (F-1 OPT Visa):
- Let’s say a student graduates on May 1st, 2022.
- The student can choose to request an OPT visa start date as late as July 1st, 2022 (two months after graduation) and have an OPT end date as late as July 1st, 2023 (one year after).
- If the student decides to submit the application on June 30th (after Graduation) and USCIS takes 90 days to process the paperwork, the student’s OPT will get approved around September or October 2022.
- However, the latest possible end date is still July 1st, 2023. The student will get around 10 months of OPT instead of 12. Never delay your OPT filing, please!
How long will it take for you to receive the EAD card? 90 days is the normal processing time.
After you submit your application, USCIS will mail you back a notice stating they have received your application.
That notice will have a receipt number, which you can use to track your case status on this website. You will probably be obsessively checking this link until it says that your application has been approved and that your EAD card is on its way. During this time, you can also register for a USCIS account here.
My advice would be to keep all your documents and notices, in case you need to use them as a reference in the future.
If you need to expedite the OPT approval, you may request your advisor to forward the job offer with a cover letter containing the your student information to the the USCIS.
However, this is not full-proof since there is no official expedite process for the 765.