Maximizing Earning Potential As F1 International Student

By Sachin Rajgire

Quick Introduction and Agenda

• Who am I and why should you listen to me?
• How can you work with Wynisco?
• I will leave some time for QA at the end.
• Do not discuss your personal situation in public.
• Email me and we will discuss one on one ( sachin@wynisco.com )

About Graduation timing

• We all know time is money.
• Amount spent during education is a waste of your time.
• Data collected from several students we place and we have access to their pay stubs.

 
Facts

• Market is hot.
• With proper training and guidance, anyone can get a job, this is especially true for experienced professionals.
• It's possible that the university you are in, paid a commission to someone to recommend you to them.
  
  

Action Items

• Graduate as fast as you can preferably < 1 year.
• If your school does not allow you to graduate sooner, change school. Nobody has stopped you from changing schools.
• If you are just starting, find the cheapest school where you can graduate fastest so you can reduce the debt you are going to pay.
• Take summer classes, whatever it takes, graduate as soon as possible.
• The world needs engineers like you to be in the industry, not in school.

Do Multiple jobs 

• OPT allows you to do as many jobs as possible legally.
• No restriction legally. I personally know students who are doing 2 jobs.
• You can do one full-time in West coast time and 1 part-time in East Coast timing.

 Don't be penny wise pound foolish

• When I was graduating a long time back, I realized that I have no skills that will help me land a job. I just wasted my time on campus and just had fun.

• So I quit my job on campus and just focused on Bootcamp for the last few months of graduation. I got the job fastest and made the most money and I did not miss amazing college moments too.
• Always remember that an on-campus job is a waste of your time. You are better off coming to companies like us to take Bootcamp and start preparing for real jobs.
• The money you will earn in 1 month of the internship is equivalent to 3 - 4 months of on-campus work.
• Remember on campus, Research assistants, TA, GA are all sources of cheap labor for university.
• GA, TA, RA still makes sense if they offer tuition remission, otherwise, you are better off upgrading your skill sets on time spent.
• Always remember, you can make around 5000 to 8000 dollars outside the university if you have the right skill sets.
• All you need is legal work authorization. 

 
ABOUT WORK AUTH 

• Most students have no clue that they have 11 months of CPT that they can utilize to work outside the campus and a full 3 months in summer.
• If they do, they don't know how to utilize it?
• The first step is to find your university policy
• Is it 20 hours/week or 40 hours/week?
• Is it on-campus or off-campus?
• From which semester can you start working off-campus 40 hours.
• Shift to a university with a more generous off-campus policy.
• After you know that you can try to find part-time or full-time employment. 
• Since there is a shortage of resources, you are likely to find something or you can come to Wynisco and we can help.

 
ABOUT DEGREES 

• Most students who come are supply chain, finance, information systems, Mechanical, public policy, etc. 
• Everyone is in IT whether you like it or not. Even if you don't want to do programming there are multiple avenues.
• This is not 100% true but students who struggle the most are not in computer science.
• Get into the technical field as soon as possible
• Take some courses to make your non STEM, STEM course. One year is just not enough to get an H1B or get a degree. I had some students who were doing MBA and converted it into STEM.
• If you know your stuff, nobody cares what degree or university you graduated from unless you are from the top 10 -15 branded universities such as Harvard, Wharton, MIT.
• Remember you are in America and by law, they can only hire people for skills they cannot find with US Citizens. 

 
ABOUT H1B / GREEN CARD

• H1B, Green Card, and Your degree are all mutually exclusive events.
• You should start thinking about doing H1B and Green Card from the day you land in the US.
• Most important ingredient is to attach yourself to a company. They might take a percentage of your income but you will make much more in the long run.
• What do you mean by attaching yourself to a company?. 
• Just so you know, the cost of filing an H1b is only around $200, Only if you are picked that your employer has to pay legal fees, etc ( Around $4500 ).
• Also important to know that there is no need for a client letter anymore for h1b.
• Also no need to establish an employee-employer relationship.
• Since the barrier to entry is very low, tons of people are filing for h1b.
• In simple terms getting h1b has gotten much easier since the Biden administration and hence getting picked up in the h1b lottery is going to get much harder. 

Extreme Route

• If making money is your only asap and you are willing to take some risk you can shift to Day 1 CPT university.
• If you have legal status trouble, you can use these universities. 
• These are legal universities that offer Day 1 CPT Work authorization.
• I DO NOT RECOMMEND this route except in urgent cases.

CONCLUSION

• The job market is hot right now. Hottest I have seen in several years.
• Whatever your situation might be, You can make it work to your advantage. 
• If you don't have legal work authorization in the US to work but you do have legal status to work in India or your native country.