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Indian three-year bachelor’s degree

Everything You Need to Know about Three-Year Bachelors Degrees and H1B Filing

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

Here’s the deal with H1B and the Indian Three-Year bachelor’s degree:

CIS will NOT accept the Indian three-year bachelor’s degree alone as adequate evidence that you or your employee or client meets H1B educational requirements.

It doesn’t matter that Indian three-year bachelor’s degrees contain just as many if not more credit hours as the US four-year bachelor’s degree. It doesn’t matter that many prominent British and US universities accept Indian students into Master’s programs with three-year bachelor’s degrees. It doesn’t matter what international trade agreements and international education analysis has to say about the academic value of an Indian three-year bachelor’s degree.

The bottom line is CIS is hung up on missing year number four, and to get your or your employee or client’s H1B visa approved, that fourth year needs to be accounted for.

Here’s how:

If you or your employee or client has three years of progressive work experience in the field of his or her H1B job, a university or college professor with the authority to issue college credit for work experience can grant one year of college credit for those three years of work experience. How can you tell if you or your employee or client has “progressive” work experience? Throughout the years of work experience, you or your employee or client must have taken on more responsibility and complexity in the work performed, indicating that education specialized to the field occurred through this work experience.

Before your file, take your or your employee or client’s transcripts and work experience to a credential evaluation agency for review. This agency must be experienced working with H1B visas and their RFEs, and have professors authorized to grant college credit for work experience on hand to write the credential evaluation. If the agency does not ask the visa or your client’s job, look elsewhere. You need to find an agency that understands the nuances of H1B visa requirements to get the results you need.

About the Author

Sheila Danzig

Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult case, RFE, Denial, or NOID, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723.

Everything You Need to Know about Three-Year Bachelors Degrees and H1B Filing Read More »

Case Study: Difficult H-1B RFE for Three-Year Bachelor’s Degree – Approved

Case Studies, Visa Approvals

One of the most common education RFEs for H-1B candidates arrives when a candidate has a three-year bachelor’s degree from India. We get dozens of clients every season coming to us with this RFE because CIS sees the missing fourth year and assumes it to be missing academic content when compared to the US four-year bachelor’s degree. While international education experts argue that duration does not accurately reflect academic content, CIS is hung up on that missing year, and without the right credential evaluation submitted alongside this transcript, an RFE or worse can be expected.

What is the right credential evaluation for this case?

This credential evaluation must take into account the candidate’s job, the particular H-1B education requirements, and the candidate’s work history. The evaluator must be knowledgeable about CIS trends and precedents, and be able to cite the proper decisions, documentation, and evidence to back up each facet of this detailed evaluation.

What we do in this situation is to convert progressive work experience in our client’s field of employ into college credit. The two functional terms here are “progressive” and “in the field of employ.” Progressive work experience means that our client took on progressively more responsibilities and duties as time went on under this employment, implying that education took place through this job. In the field means that this work experience must be in the exact field of our client’s current H-1B job indicated in the petition. This conversion equates three years of progressive work experience in the field to one year of college credit. This is a fairly simple and straightforward way to account for the missing fourth year and yields a high approval rate when it comes to submitting the original petition, and for answering RFEs. We include documentation, expert opinion letters, international recognition for this conversion, and CIS precedent decisions in this evaluation.

If you, or your employee or client receives an RFE for a three-year bachelor’s degree, we can help you overturn it and get your client’s H-1B visa approved.

About the Author 

Sheila Danzig

Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director at TheDegreePeople.com, a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a free analysis of any difficult case, RFE, Denial, or NOID, please go to http://ccifree.com/ or call 800 771 4723.

Case Study: Difficult H-1B RFE for Three-Year Bachelor’s Degree – Approved Read More »

What USCIS Needs to Know about Your Client’s Indian Three-Year Degree

Credential Evaluation, Immigration, Visa Approvals

Current US educational trends clearly show that the amount of time it takes to complete a degree is not an accurate reflection of its actual academic content. More and more US college students are taking over four years to complete their four-year bachelor’s degrees, opting to take time off or take fewer classes at a time. However, when it comes to H1-b educational trends, USCIS is obsessed with the “four-year” aspect of the US four-year bachelor’s degree required equivalency. For this reason, H1-b candidates with three-year bachelor’s degrees from India have trouble getting their visas approved.

As an immigration attorney, it is important to first understand the truth behind misconceptions about the Indian three-year degree, and then understand how to address these misconceptions to USCIS in a way that takes their trends into account. Regardless of the actual value of your client’s education, it must be communicated in such a way that is in harmony with CIS requirements and educational trends.

There are two prominent misconceptions about the education of candidates who hold Indian three-year bachelor’s degrees:

  1. Candidates do not possess the core knowledge that comes from a US four-year degree.

The Indian three-year bachelor’s degree tends to have a more specialized curriculum while US four-year bachelor’s degree programs require general credits and classes from outside of a student’s major. However, this is changing in universities across India. Many institutions have changed to a choice-based credit system, which allows flexibility for students to take classes outside of their major. At the same time, the core education curriculum required for Indian students to earn a High School Diploma before they even enter college is extensive, rigorous, and well rounded. In most cases, Indian students are coming into college with the core knowledge US bachelor’s degree students must learn in college.

  1. The missing fourth year means a missing year of academic content.

Debunking this myth is a matter of math. The US four-year bachelor’s degree requires 120 credit hours to graduate. One college credit hour is comprised of fifteen classroom contact hours, meaning fifteen hours spent directly in the classroom. This is 1800 classroom contact hours for a US four-year bachelor’s degree. According to Dr. R. Venkatachalam, former psychology professor at Bharathiar University in India (http://www.emailwire.com/doc/three-year-indian-degree.pdf), a typical Indian three-year degree program has roughly 3,240 classroom contact hours.

Now that you understand the value of your client’s three-year Indian bachelor’s degree, how can you express this to USCIS in a way that they will understand? Regardless of how many classroom contact hours your client’s degree consists of, CIS still requires a progressive work experience evaluation to account for the missing fourth year. This means your client must have three years of work experience in their field of employ that can be converted into one year of college credit in that field. Progressive work experience means your client took on more work and responsibility in this experience, indicating that specialized skills and knowledge were learned and mastered. A credential evaluation agency with the authority to convert progressive work experience into college credit can write the detailed credential evaluation your and your client need to meet H1-b visa requirements in accordance with CIS educational trends. Do not file your client’s H1-b petition without one such credential evaluation or the missing fourth year will come back to haunt you in the form of an RFE or Denial.

About the Author

Sheila Danzig

Sheila Danzig is the Executive Director of TheDegreePeople.com a Foreign Credentials Evaluation Agency. For a no charge analysis of any difficult case, RFEs, Denials, or NOIDs, please go to http://www.ccifree.com/ or call 800.771.4723.

What USCIS Needs to Know about Your Client’s Indian Three-Year Degree Read More »

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