Ex-Visa Officer Reveals Visa Interview SECRETS | Million Views

what was the mistake I made that got my Visa denied biggest mistake that applicants make when they go into a vs interview is they give short answers when you go to the interview I want you to imagine that you're you're not speaking to a judge imagine that you're speaking to a colleague getting your Visa approved is the most important stage of the entire study abroad process with a Visa denial the effort you put into getting an admission a scholarship may all be fruitless on this platform I have interacted with a lot of individuals who have

shared their visa acquisition experience with us but how about hearing from the Visa officers themselves who actually issues the visa to let you know the secrets behind a Visa approval and or a denial what can you do to get your visa application approved what should you avoid in this interview I am interacting with the former Visa officer who works with Argo visa to share all the secrets my name is Fred thank you for subscribing this is the fried effect let's get started [Music] hi everyone my name is Frederick and you are welcome to the TFE

YouTube channel today we are privileged to have a former Visa officer with us normally you get the perspective as an applicant it is good to hear from the people who have issuing your visa to understand what they are expecting from you so we are collaborating with ago visa to give you an exclusive insight into a Visa officer's mind and how they go about approving your episode you would don't want to miss any aspect of this interview so I would like to introduce yourself um quickly and then we get to their questions sure it's good to

be here Frederick thanks for having us so we're happy to uh to collaborate with you and to be able to speak to your audience uh I'm Ben I used to be a Visa officer myself I did that for the US government and embassies and consulates around the world for many years I did over 60 thousand Visa interviews in total sitting there at the window making the decisions on every type of Visa that you can imagine tourist visa student visas marriage visas Diversity Lottery visas everything that is out there I've done that and it's not only

me at the Argo team at Argo we've got over 20 officers who have worked in 35 different countries speak 14 different languages and in total the number of visas that we've adjudicated is over 1 million so we're bringing real expertise two visa applicants we're the only team in the world that's able to do this to bring this much expertise where you can actually get real Insider Knowledge from a former Visa officer about what actually goes into the decision why a Visa is approved why a Visa is denied so you know I left the government a

few years ago and I've been helping people pass their visa interviews since then because while I was on the inside I saw that there were people who were getting their visas denied unnecessarily for two main reasons one because uh maybe the officer just didn't understand the situation didn't speak the local language didn't know enough about the local country and you as an applicant can actually help that you can educate them a little bit when needed and the other reason was because applicants would be poorly prepared sometimes underprepared or sometimes badly prepared by someone who doesn't

really know what someone should do in a visa interview and I saw applicants that would come into the interview and do odd things say odd things behave in in weird unnatural ways because they'd been told this is the way you have to act to get your visa issued that's not necessary and there are ways to get the visa issued which involve telling the truth in a direct and pointed way to get your point across to get your story across to give the Visa officer that confidence to issue the Visa so that's why I came out

that's why all of the Argo team came out of the government and now we help people like you get your visa issued awesome so you would want to subscribe to the channel because after this I'm going to give you a code that will give you a 10 off if you want to have a one-on-one conversation with Ben and the ago Visa team so please subscribe to the channel and you get a code because you have subscribed to the TRV YouTube channel to get a 10 of when you book a consultation with agrovisa team and you

get to speak to Ben one-on-one so Ben let's get going so the number one question everybody asks is what was the mistake I made that got my Visa denied so I guess what I'm trying to ask is what is the number one Visa it takes that applicants usually make well that's a good question uh the biggest mistake that applicants make when they go into a vs interview is they give short answers short and also uninforming answers so people come into the interview and I think what's going on because I've had a lot of experience and

I've gone through and I've seen everything that the people who are online giving advice say the piece of information that's out there that's the least accurate and actually the most harmful is that you should just say as little as possible right they say what are you going to do in the U.S and then you respond with study oh okay well how are you going to pay for it okay myself these answers don't help you they actually hurt you and the reason is because I what most people may assume and it's an incorrect assumption is that

the Visa officers start up here at approval like if you don't make any mistakes your Visa will be approved and it's only if you make a mistake then you drop to a refusal but that's not the case in the regulations in the law right it's actually surprising I was surprised when I learned this when I first became a Visa officer and went through the training these applicants are considered guilty until they can prove themselves innocent guilty of what not necessarily a crime but guilty of not being a qualified applicant and it's only when the applicant

proves that they are qualified that then the Visa officer will issue the Visa so being reticent being quiet not wanting to give much information actually hurts you because you stay down here you never get up here where the Visa officer will be confident they can issue the Visa so you've got to give answers that contain information because the Visa officer has to feel like they understand your situation before they're going to feel confident enough to click that issue button so are there a limited number of questions at Visa office is restricted to ask no the

questions that the Visa officers ask but well they can ask anything they want right the most common question though will be what's your purpose of travel to the US definitely for a b Visa what's your purpose of travel if you're a student you can assume that they're going to ask you okay what where are you going to study what are you going to study something like that but after that there's no guarantee that they're going to ask anything there's no guarantee they're going to ask about your funding about why you chose this school about for

instance did you apply to any other schools there's no guarantee that they're going to ask any of these why do they ask these questions then why do they ask have you applied to any other schools it's not because you have to apply to other schools right it's because they want to hear you talk they want to hear you tell them your story they want they want to know that you're a real student and what do real students do well they have a student Journey right a real student is studying hard and thinking about where they

want to go to school right and why have they chosen these places well well it could be because the academics are great maybe you've got a scholarship maybe you went to an academic fair and this school impressed you maybe this school was the most responsive and recruited you maybe you went to an educational consultant who recommended a few schools and you applied to this one maybe you've got a cousin who who went to that school maybe you've always just wanted to go to Los Angeles and so you looked at the schools in Los Angeles there

can be any reason but the results officer wants to feel like you're a real student if you just say the school has a beautiful Campus of 20 acres and they have a student faculty ratio of 14 to 1. that's not the reason people choose schools that you went to the school's website or a Wikipedia article and just memorized two sentences that doesn't make the Visa officer confident that you're a real student so you have to be real it's the the the secret and I know it's it sounds simple it's just the concept that you're having

a conversation with the VISA officer awesome so from the African perspective and me coming from Ghana as an African when we talk to elderly people or people in high offices making an eye contact is not one of them now how important is eye contact in the F1 visa interview generally a visa interview approval well you know these are Americans that you're doing the interviews with um and you know Americans come from a lot of different backgrounds but culturally you know they're all Americans and you know while they may have some experience in Ghana or in

other countries in the region in Nigeria or Sierra Leone they're going to still feel in their heart you know the American Standards for things which is confidently looking into someone's eyes making eye contact speaking clearly right uh right feeling feeling confident that when you when you're confident they're going to feel confident about you right but uh speaking kind of like this quietly and not wanting to make eye contact it makes them think well why right is it because uh you know they know that they might assume it's because you're nervous but then while I know

most students are nervous because it's a important interview right and they're they're concerned about the outcome the Visa officers will immediately perhaps assume that oh they're nervous because they're lying to me that's what they start to assume right so the way the way to assume to approach this and I know that in a lot of cultures you know deference to Authority is very important to to Elders to anyone you in a government government position and so you might you know kind of be in this mode of of thinking oh I need oh yes or no

sir please sir that kind of thing that's not what Americans like Americans are kind of uh they don't really like hierarchy in American workplaces we don't say uh sir or Madam or ma'am or Madam for our for our bosses we just say yes John right or of course Susan right that's how we talk to our bosses there's only one person in the entire Embassy that people will call sir and that's the Ambassador right so in the entire organization there's one person and that's actually quite rare and it's kind of a formality that's a tradition um

you know we say yes sir Mr Ambassador right and there's but there's no one else so when you go to the interview I want you to imagine that you're you're not speaking to a judge or a policeman imagine that you're speaking to a a colleague right so when you're at work and you're talking to someone that's your same level right you're not calling them sir right but you're still being professional right you want them to think of you as a professional so and you treat them professionally right so you treat you treat them nicely you

treat them formally uh but you're not being subservient you're not being uh too differing to them awesome awesome glad you bring that perspective so if I'm going to a community college if I'm going to an Ivy League my question is does my college really matter like the the standard of my college and what program I'm going to pursue I want you to combine these two that's the kind of University or the college I'm going into and my program really matter in the Visa approval it does now the program doesn't matter as much as the school

uh you know sometimes people might think okay this type of program sounds better than that type of program um but really it's the school that you're going to now when you if you go to an information session uh from the embassy they're they're going to say nope all schools are legitimate you can go to a community college you can go to an English Language School you can go to a four-year University it's all legit because they can't say that they're going to give PRI give preference to some schools and not to other schools but in

practice it's inevitable when they see Harvard or Princeton or Yale are one of these best universities in the world they're going to think oh wow Harvard has accepted this student they must have really strong academic credentials right and they're going to issue all of those and then let's say you've got a middle school a middle level school where they've heard of the name of the school they know it's a real school right you know but maybe it's not the best school but still it's got a reputation right they know okay well this is a real

school students in America that I know I might have friends that have gone to this school so I know that you have to you have to apply you have to be accepted you have to be a real student but then there's schools that they've never heard of maybe community colleges maybe smaller four-year schools that they've never heard of and they're going to think I don't know anything about the school and if I've never heard of it it must be very small it doesn't have a reputation and that's going to make them more skeptical because they

don't know okay do they have real entrance requirements do you have to pass a test you have to submit scores or transcripts I don't I don't even know so you're going to have to prove why this is a good school and why you're you're a trustworthy student and then at the the lower end of that list is going to be language schools if you're just going to study English and I don't know if in your audience you have anybody that's in that situation from a francophone country but if you're just going to study English that's

the one where those schools will accept anyone so it's not that those schools are bad it's that the best student can go to an English school and also someone who's not a student at all can just say yep I want to go to an English school and so that's that's the one where they're going to have the harshest uh the harshest review of thank you you're still watching here on the TRV YouTube channel we are privileged to have the agrovisa team specifically and Ben with us who has interviewed more than 600 000 Visa applicants he

is very experienced in this Visa processes it is always great to have their perspective so whether this is your first time going for your visa interview you've ever been refused several times the best way is to interact or talk to a former Visa officer who understands your situation better to be able to advise you have a mock interview with you and review your document before you go for your next interview so because you have subscribed to the TRV YouTube channel if you use the code fred10 you will get a 10 discount if you book a

one-on-one consultation with ago Visa remember the code is fed 10 and you have to type it as it appears on the screen so this gives you a 10 discount when you book a one-on-one consultation with ago Visa so you're going to have the opportunity for former Visa officer to review your document give you an expert advice and also organize a one-on-one mock interview to ensure that you are very prepared before you appear at the embassy for your interview the website link to book a one-on-one consultation with the agrovisa team will be shared in the video

description all you need to do is to click on it select the package you are interested in and type in the code fred10 and you're going to get a 10 discount so that you save some money for yourself because you have subscribed to this channel so it is a very simple process here is how to go about it to book a consultation with a former Visa officer you will simply click on the link which I'll share in the video description I'll also put it in the comment section so it will be pinned in the comment

section just use this specific Link in order to get the 10 discount it will take you to this website now when you come to the website you click on book consultation this website will open all you need to do is to type in your name your last name you type your email you set up a password and then click on that and then you create an account so when you are about to check out you'll be asked if you have a special promotion code then you click here then you type in the code Fred thing

so the the promotion code will be applied after you type in that and that's it you're all set you get a 10 off I wish you the best as you prepare for the final stage of your study abroad Journey that is getting your Visa approved it comes with huge excitement so don't be discouraged if you've ever been refused this is your time my name is Fred thank you for subscribing I'll see you in another video [Music] foreign