Student Visas

The M-1 visa is for people who come to the United States to attend a vocational or other recognized nonacademic program — trade and technical schools, flight training, culinary programs, cosmetology, mechanics, and similar hands-on courses. It is the companion category to the F-1 visa, which covers academic and language study. Language-training programs are specifically excluded from M-1 and belong in F-1.

The F-1 process starts with a school rather than with the government. Nothing can be filed until an institution has accepted you and issued the document that makes a visa application possible. The steps below are in the order they have to happen, and each one depends on the one before it.

Scope of this page. This page is a broad introduction to the nonimmigrant classifications that allow a foreign national to study in the United States. It identifies the categories, explains how they relate to one another, and points to the pages that treat each of them in detail. It is deliberately general: it does not attempt to state every requirement, exception or filing step, and the linked pages should be read before any decision is made.