According to the author of this account, official wait times for US visas in India don’t match reality: H-1B slots in Kolkata don’t open at all, and student visa slots appear rarely and vanish within seconds. The author advises starting the process six months or more in advance, without relying on the published wait times. Below is the appointment situation described in the material and the practical steps that follow from it.

Official wait times vs. the real calendar

The US Embassy publishes interview wait times: 3.5 months in Chennai and one month in Hyderabad for student visas, one month in Kolkata for H-1B, and 8.5 months in Kolkata for tourist visas. The material questions these figures. In particular, since 2025, H-1B appointments, according to the claim described there, open only in Hyderabad and Chennai, so talking about a one-month wait in Kolkata makes no sense.

In the case described, a tourist appointment was checked through a tourist-visa account: no slot was found in Kolkata at all. According to the author, such situations happen every day: slots appear and disappear within seconds, and then may not open again for weeks or months.

The last major H-1B opening

The last notable H-1B appointment opening, according to the material, was in April 2026. After that, almost no slots appeared for this category. For student visas, the situation is described as similar: rare openings do happen, but few manage to grab them.

Tourist appointments appear from time to time. At the same time, as the material states, finding an open slot for them happens roughly once a week per hundred accounts, which is described as a very slow process.

Separately, the material mentions that emergency appointments have stopped working. Over the past year and a half, applicants with an imminent start date — even those admitted to top universities — often fail to get in front of a visa officer before classes begin. Emergency requests are mostly denied, so there’s less point in filing them than before. Hundreds of students are postponing their studies.

Published interview wait times in India

The figures the US Embassy announced in the material, and what the author questions

  • Student visa F-1, Chennai3,5 місяцяpublished wait time
  • Student visa F-1, Hyderabad1 місяцьpublished wait time
  • H-1B, Kolkata1 місяцьpublished wait time; questioned in the material, no slots available
  • Tourist visa, Kolkata8,5 місяцяpublished wait time; no slots found in the described case

What applicants are advised to do

The main advice from the material is to start early. It’s worth applying six months before the start of studies: get the I-20 well in advance, begin the visa process, and watch for slots. The more time you have, the better off you are.

Applicants are also advised not to trust the embassy’s published wait times and not to rely solely on the official checking tool. According to the material, slots can appear at any hour, including at three or four in the morning, so monitoring needs to run around the clock.

For security, it’s worth keeping the account within a group of trusted people rather than in public communities: in such groups, according to the description, scammers show fake or AI-generated booking screenshots and then try to extract account credentials and money.

Why the wait keeps growing

According to the material, the situation is affected by tightened visa policy under the new Trump administration. Previously, as the text states, H-1B and F-1 appointments appeared regularly; now they have become rare for these categories.

The consequences are described bluntly: families are separated, people are stuck in India and have lost jobs because they couldn’t return to the US in time due to an expired visa, or, conversely, are afraid to leave the US because they don’t know if they’ll be able to get an appointment after coming back. Some applicants wait for months for a slot without even having begun the interview-wait process.

A line of people outside a consulate building in an Indian city