US F-1 visas for Indian students drop 69% in June-July 2025: Data

F-1 visa issuances surged in the post-COVID years, rising from 40,194 in June and July 2021 to 62,229 in those months in 2022 and 72,027 in 2023. From this peak in 2023, it plummeted to 41,336 in June and July 2024, even before the Trump administration took office, data on monthly visa issuances from the US Department of State shows.

Monthly visa issuance figures for June, July, and August were released this week.

China also saw a drop in F-1 visas in June and July 2025, albeit a smaller fall of around 56 per cent compared to 2024. Students from China received more F-1 visas in June and July last year – 17,025 compared to 12,776 visas issued to Indian students. The last time students from China received more F-1 visas in these months was in 2021 (55,059 students from China vs 40,194 Indian students).

In the years since then, the number of Indian students receiving F-1 visas has been higher. In June and July 2023, for instance, the difference was stark — while over 72,000 F-1 visas were issued to Indian students, the corresponding figure for China was 42,854.

What happened in 2025

The Indian Express reported in July last year that the number of F-1 visas issued to Indian students from March to May (9,906) fell to the lowest level for those months since the pandemic, a 27 per cent drop compared to the corresponding period last year.

The drop in F-1 visa issuances in the crucial months of June and July 2025 followed measures introduced by the Trump administration. This included a pause on interviews for student visa applicants for a few weeks from the end of May, until they were resumed on June 18.

Announcing the pause, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in May 2025 that additional student or exchange visitor visa appointment capacity would not be added: “in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting”.

On June 23 last year, the US embassy in India asked visa applicants in the F, M, or J categories (student and exchange visitor visas) to set the privacy settings on their social media accounts to “public” to facilitate vetting. In the same month, the embassy asked visa applicants to list all social media usernames or handles for every platform they had used over the past five years on their application form.

The administration’s steps earlier in 2025 had also sparked anxiety among students. Research grants were frozen, affecting work across several universities, including Harvard and Stanford.

International students, some of whom were involved in pro-Palestine protests or law enforcement-related proceedings, found that their Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) records were abruptly terminated in April last year. These were later reinstated after lawsuits challenging the termination.

At 3.63 lakh, Indian students constituted the largest international student cohort in the US in 2024-25, accounting for around 31 per cent of total international student enrolment, according to Open Doors data.

This was followed by students from China, at around 23 per cent of total international student enrolment. Indian students had surpassed the Chinese to constitute the largest international student cohort in the US for the first time in 2023-24, according to Open Doors.

F-1 visa issuances to Indians (June and July)

Source: US State Department