About 81 percent of F-1 interviews from Nepal ended in a refusal in FY 2025, up from 59 percent the year before. It is the hardest visa on our list and the most expensive one to fail.
We are not going to talk you out of America. People from Nepal go every year and some of them build the best careers of anybody we see. But you should walk in knowing three things, and the third is the one that changes outcomes.
An I-20 is not an indicator
Getting an I-20 means a university has accepted you and believes you can pay. It has nothing to do with the visa.
The visa is decided in a conversation at a window that lasts about three minutes. The officer is not re-reading your file. They are assessing one thing: whether you intend to return to Nepal.
The refused application still costs you
USD 350 for the SEVIS I-901 fee. USD 185 for the DS-160. That is USD 535 in government fees, more than 80,000 rupees, and neither is refunded when the answer is no. Add university application fees and travel to the embassy on top.
This is the reason to be sure before applying rather than after, and the reason we will sometimes tell somebody the American application is not the one to make this year. The whole ledger is here.
What the one in five look like
The successful applications are not the ones with the best coaching. They tend to share four things:
A specific answer about coming back. Not "I love my country". Something concrete: a family business, a role waiting, a licence that only works in Nepal, a plan you can describe in one sentence and mean.
Money that clearly belongs to your family. With a history. A balance that appeared last month, or a sponsor you cannot explain your relationship to, reads badly whatever the number.
A course that follows from your degree. A change of direction needs a reason and some evidence behind it, not a paragraph.
Funding, where possible. This is the underrated one. American universities give real money away, and an assistantship or a scholarship does more for an interview than any amount of practice. It is the single thing most worth chasing before you apply.
Working there is not a plan
Twenty hours a week, on campus only, during term. There is no falling back on a warehouse or a restaurant when campus jobs run out, and they do run out.
The federal minimum is USD 7.25; campus jobs typically pay 12 to 16, and many states set a higher floor. Assume American study is funded by family or by a scholarship. The library job is pocket money.
A postgraduate teaching or research assistantship is the exception, and it is the only well-paid option on campus. It is worth applying for one before you have an offer, not after.
Afterwards, and the lottery
OPT gives 12 months of work after graduation, plus 24 more if your degree is on the STEM list. That extension is why the field matters more in America than anywhere else on this list.
To stay beyond OPT you need an employer to sponsor an H-1B, and the H-1B is a genuine lottery, entered once a year and heavily oversubscribed. Three years of STEM OPT gives you three entries. A non-STEM degree gives you one.
That is the whole calculation, and it is why anybody describing an American green card as a pathway rather than a gamble is selling you something.
Our advice, plainly: go for the education and the OPT experience. Treat staying as the upside rather than the plan, and choose STEM if the subject genuinely suits you.
Where the Nepalis are
264,317, the largest population of the five, but spread across a continent: New York, Texas, Maryland, Virginia and California.
Whether there is a community where you are going depends entirely on which state your university is in. It is worth checking before you accept an offer, because "there are lots of Nepalis in America" is true and completely useless if yours is in rural Ohio.
One practical thing
Health insurance is not optional and not cheap. Around USD 1,800 a year on a university plan, and using it still leaves you paying a share of every bill.
See where you stand for the USA, or read what life there costs.