News

STEM OPT Rule Published

The Department of Homeland Security released the new regulations on STEM OPT, the extension of OPT allowed for students in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.  As this 80+ page rule has just been released to the public, we will be unable to answer individual student questions about the new regulations until we have had time to analyze the changes completely.   Please read the rest of this message for information on the effective date of the rule and our upcoming webinar.

NEW RULE TAKES EFFECT MAY 10, 2016

The new regulations are not in effect until May 10, 2016 and until that time, STEM extensions will be processed under the prior regulations.  If your OPT is ending before May 10, 2016 and you are requesting a STEM extension, please follow the existing instructions on our website.  Provisions have been made in the new regulations that will allow some current holder of 17 month STEM OPT to request an extension to the new 24 month STEM period.  The details on this eligibility and process are not yet known.

OIS STEM OPT WEBINAR ON MARCH 24

To provide information about and answer questions on the STEM OPT regulations, the Office of International Services will offer a webinar via Adobe Connect on Thursday, March 24, 2016 beginning at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time.  If you wish to participate, you may do so through the website:  https://connect.johnshopkins.edu/OPT-STEM.   You do not need to register ahead of time for this webinar, as it is open to the public.  The webinar will be recorded and accessible shortly thereafter via the OIS website, https://ois.jhu.edu.

We ask that you defer any questions until after the webinar is held, and accordingly we are sending this standard response to all inquiries at this time.  We will respond to most individual inquiries only after we have provided information via the webinar.

If you would like to read the new regulation, it is available online at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-03-11/pdf/2016-04828.pdf    We caution you not to take any independent actions based upon reading the regulations without discussing them with an OIS advisor.