Start and end dates for OPT visas

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rwcb

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I'm studying at an US med school and on an F-1 visa. I plan to apply to a residency that requires a prelim/transitional year so I was going to use the OPT option on the F-1 visa for that year. Does anyone have any experience with the start and end dates for the OPT especially if I end up doing my PGY-2 at another institution? It looks like a lot of these prelim programs start mid June (for orientation) and end June 30th so that is actually a little more than a year.

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This is a common problem. Your OPT visa is controlled / filed by your medical school. Once you match you should quickly clarify what the first day of work will be, and ask your school to set the dates appropriately. Despite this, I've had interns on OPT starting on July 1, which causes some mild headaches since our orientation starts in June. It's even a bit worse than that -- you get paid for orientation, so your job is actually 365 days + 5 days of orientation, which the OPT can't handle (unless they have changed the rules so that they can be good for more than 12 months, which there was some discussion of in the past).
 
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