The United States, long regarded as a beacon of higher education for international students, has hit a troubling milestone, as U.S. student visa denials have surged to their highest level in a decade.
In the 2023-24 fiscal year, spanning October 2023 to September 2024, a staggering 41% of F-1 student visa applications were rejected, according to an analysis of U.S. State Department data.
The number of U.S. student visa denials, which stood at 279,000, represents the highest rejection rate in at least ten years.
This marks a near doubling of the rejection rate from 2014, when denials hovered around 21%, raising alarm bells among potential students coming from other countries.
The F-1 visa, the primary pathway for international students pursuing academic programs in the U.S., has become increasingly elusive.
The total number of applications for the 2023-24 fiscal year stood at 679,000, a dip of 3% from the previous year’s 699,000.
The number of F-1 visa applications peaked at 856,000 in 2014-15 but has steadily declined in subsequent years, dropping to 162,000 in the 2019-2020 Covid-19 year. After the pandemic, the number of applications gradually increased.
In contrast, the 2022-23 fiscal year saw a 36% denial rate, with 253,000 applications turned down.
A Department of State spokesperson who spoke with the press said that there had been a “change in methodology” for calculating visa data since the 2019 fiscal year.
“Our previous methodology was based on a count of workload actions, which were not linked by application. The new methodology more accurately reflects outcomes from the visa application process during a specified reporting period.
“The new methodology follows visa applications, including updates to their status (i.e., issued or refused), which could change as the fiscal year progresses, or result in slight changes in data for earlier years. Therefore, beginning with FY 2020, individual monthly issuance reports should not be aggregated, as this will not provide an accurate issuance total for the fiscal year to date,” the spokesperson said.
