F-1 OPT Between Undergrad and Grad School?

[TheUnbearableLightness]

Hey guys. Long-time lurker, first time poster. This site is invaluable for navigating visa stuff.

I'm a Canadian citizen on an F-1 student visa, about to finish my Bachelor's this spring. I'm loving the Optional Practical Training you can do on this visa: easy work authorization, and I don't even have force my employer through a bunch of confusing forms? Awesome. I'd like to use OPT to work as a research assistant before graduate school, because it doesn't hurt to have a little more experience and a little more money.

The timing kind of sucks, though: OPT is only for twelve months, unless I use my one-time, 17-month STEM extension. That means if I start working right after I graduate in May 2016, my work authorization ends in May 2017, months before I would start any graduate program in the fall. The US government does give me a 60-day window to get myself out of the states, but unless I find a program that starts at the end of July, that's not enough time. I could use my STEM extension, but for only three months, that seems like a waste.

I suppose I could start graduate school during summer. How uncommon is that?

Has anyone else taken a gap year to use their OPT like this? How did you make it happen? 

 

[housing]

I think you can get another OPT for your graduate degree; there's no relation between your undergrad OPT and your graduate OPT. So just use the STEM extension.

[TakeruK]

Yes, just use the STEM extension. You get a completely new and different F-1 status for each graduate program, so what you do now will not affect your F-1 status in grad school. You should talk about this with your international office, in fact, this is the perfect time to sit down with your international student advisors and find out what is the next best step.

Finally, even if you cannot or choose not to take the STEM extension, this just means you cannot work between the end of your OPT in May 2017 and the start of the graduate program in September 2017. You will have to leave the US at the end of your OPT but if you want to just be in the US, you may do so on a tourist visa (6 months at a time). It just means you can't work! Or you can just spend that time at home or on vacation etc.