The Student Visa Rule Lands in Six Days and the Official Guidance Does Not Agree With Itself

On 15 September the United States ends "duration of status" for F-1 students and J-1 exchange visitors. That much everybody agrees on.

We spent this morning reading what four university international offices are telling their own students. They contradict each other on five points that change what a person should do this week. One of them contradicts itself.

That is not a criticism of them. DHS has not issued implementation guidance. Columbia says so plainly: SEVP has not yet issued guidance. NYU says it is awaiting further guidance from the government. Georgia Tech says some areas depend on additional direction from federal agencies. Every office is reading the same unlit regulation and arriving somewhere slightly different.

Which means the most useful thing we can give you is not another interpretation. It is a map of where the disagreements are, so you know which questions actually need an answer from your own adviser.

What is settled

The rule takes effect on 15 September 2026. It replaces open-ended D/S admission with a fixed date on your I-94, tied to your programme end date and capped at four years.

If you are already in the US, admitted for D/S and maintaining status on that date, transition provisions let you continue to your existing programme end date without filing anything.

Leaving the country and returning on or after the 15th ends that. You are readmitted under the new system with a fixed Admit Until Date, and the F-1 post-completion grace period drops from 60 days to 30. We set out that mechanism in full last week.

A coalition led by NAFSA and the Presidents' Alliance has asked a federal court to block the rule. As of this morning no order has issued. The judge declined to rule immediately and left open the possibility of a temporary restraining order to give himself time past the 15th. Anyone telling you how that will go is guessing.

The five things the guidance disagrees on

1. When your OPT window actually closes. There is a transition period in which you can file for post-completion OPT or STEM OPT without a separate extension of stay application. Columbia says on or before 18 March 2027. Georgia Tech says "on or before 18 March" in one paragraph and "prior to 18 March" two paragraphs later. NYU says before 18 March. Tulane says until 17 March. Four offices, three different dates, and a "before" versus "on or before" that matters if you file on the day.

2. What the four years is measured from. Georgia Tech and Tulane measure it from the rule's effective date, which puts a hard ceiling at 15 September 2030 for everybody. NYU measures it from your entry. For a student arriving in 2028 those give completely different answers.

3. Whether you keep 60 days or drop to 30. Columbia, Georgia Tech and NYU all say a student who stays inside the US keeps the 60-day grace period through the transition. Tulane states the cut to 30 days with no carve-out at all. Tulane's page was last updated on 28 July, which is the oldest in the group and is very likely the explanation.

4. Whether your admission date is frozen on 15 September. Georgia Tech says your Admit Until Date is set from your I-20 as it stands on the 15th. Columbia describes the same transition without any such freeze. This is not academic: it decides whether a programme extension granted next week actually lengthens the time you are admitted for, or whether it does nothing to your I-94.

5. Your passport. NYU is the only one of the four to raise it, and treats it as decisive: CBP cannot issue an I-94 that runs past your passport's expiry, so if your passport expires before your programme ends, your admission gets cut to the passport date. The other three list only programme end date, EAD date and the four-year cap. If that is right, and it is a straightforward proposition, then renewing a passport that expires soon is worth doing before you next travel.

The one that should make you check dates on everything

NYU's page is the only one in the group updated this month. It carries a banner dated 8 September correcting the post-completion OPT filing window to 30 days from the programme completion date, regardless of international travel, and noting explicitly that the previous deadline of 60 days was wrong.

The body of the same page, under the section on whether to re-enter before 15 September, still tells you that you retain the standard 60-day OPT filing window.

A student who reads the travel section and not the banner gets the old answer. Today.

We are pointing at this because it is the most diligent office in the set, not the least. They found their own error and published the correction inside twenty-four hours. The correction simply has not reached every paragraph yet, which is what happens to every page during a week like this one, including ours. Check the date on anything you are about to rely on, and check whether a later note on the same page contradicts the part you read.

What is still worth doing this week

Ask about a programme extension. If you know you need longer than your I-20 allows, a request made before the 15th is handled under the current framework. After that you also have to file Form I-539 with USCIS, which NYU puts at $420 online or $470 by mail. That is a real saving and the window is still open.

Renew a passport that expires soon, before you travel rather than after.

Think hard before booking a flight. Re-entering before the 15th keeps you under D/S with the full 60-day grace period. Re-entering after gives you a fixed date and 30 days. NYU is the only office to lay this out as a decision, and it declines to advise either way, which is the honest position. It is your call and it is worth making deliberately.

If you are mid-transfer, ask your DSO today. This is the genuinely urgent one. No office has stated what has to have happened before the 15th for a transfer to be treated under the old rules. Georgia Tech advises getting both a transfer release date and a new I-20 before then, without saying which one controls. Nobody else offers a test. If you are moving between institutions this autumn, that ambiguity is sitting directly on top of your status.

The four questions to take to your adviser

1. Under your reading, is my Admit Until Date frozen at what my I-20 says on 15 September?
2. Does my four-year cap run from the rule date or from my entry?
3. What exactly has to be completed before the 15th for my transfer or level change to fall under the old rules?
4. Does my passport expiry cut my admission short, and should I renew first?

Take your own documents. Not a printout of this page, and not a WhatsApp forward. The transition rules turn on facts specific to you, and a regulation this unsettled produces confident wrong answers at scale.

For the wider picture, our United States visa guide covers the routes this feeds into and our United States country guide covers the cost and healthcare side. If you want your own timeline checked against the rules rather than against a headline, that is what a Personal Relocation Assessment is for.

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ExpatLife.ai researches relocation and visa routes against primary sources. We are not immigration lawyers and this is not legal advice. Everything above was read from the four university pages linked, on the morning of 9 September 2026. Those pages change. For your own case, speak to your Designated School Officer, your Responsible Officer, or a qualified immigration attorney.

Research and drafting assistance: Claude (Anthropic). Verification of the rule, the effective date and the litigation status against the Federal Register and the parties' own filings, editing and final responsibility: ExpatLife Editorial Team, 9 September 2026.