Visa Application
Last updated
Last updated
Middle of February
Receiving offer
February - March
Update passport, prepare proof of employment and bank statement (past 6 months) of your guardian
March
Apply for I-20
April - June
(After receiving your I-20) apply for visa online and do visa in-person interview in consulate
All the content below is based on the experience of Class 2026. For potential new policies faced by Class 2027, please refer to relevant official documents and websites.
In mid-February, everyone who has applied for DD program would receive the admission state update inform from Michigan Admissions by email with which the Michigan Enrollment Connect account got registered. Then the applicant could log into Michigan Enrollment Connect to check. If what you see next is an offer with blue and yellow ribbons floating on the website, congratulations! You've been accepted by University of Michigan!
Just like most colleges in North America, the applicant is supposed to decide whether to accept the offer manually after receiving the offer. If the offer is accepted, the university would charge $300 as the enrollment deposit. The applicant won't need to pay the deposit if he/she declines the offer. The deadline for offer acceptance is May 1st.
From the day DD application is submitted on Common App to college registration in August, Michigan Admissions would send emails to remind the applicant to pay the $75 application fee from time to time. JI students would waive the fee automatically, so there's no need to pay it.
The very first thing new students should do is to apply for US visa. Before you start to prepare materials, you should know that I-20 is one of the core documents for F-1 visa application.
To be eligible to receive I-20, you need to upload and submit all the materials above on the same webpage.
Passport (bio-data page)
Financial Resource Statement
Bank deposit proof (at least for 1 year of tuition and life cost in Ann Arbor, CNY and USD both okay)
Employment certificate of the guardian
Bank statement for 6 months
All the materials above should be formatted in English. Thus remember to apply for the English version when applying for relevant documents from the bank.
When the student's I-20 request is verified, he/she would be able to download the PDF version of his/her own I-20 form on the Enrollment Connect, which should be printed out to bring to the visa interview.
Signatures by the applicant and his/her guardian are required in the "Student Attestation" column in I-20 form when it's checked during the visa interview (marked as red in the I-20 sample file above). Don't forget to fill them!
Passport
I-20
DS-160 confirmation page
Interview appointment confirmation page
I-901 payment confirmation page
A 2''×2'' white-background passport-size photo
The materials above must be brought to the interview.
UM offer letter
Bank statement for 6 months
Employment certificate of the guardian
Birth certificate
Household registration book
Graduation certificate of the high school
Certificate of enrollment in SJTU
The materials above are supportive and optional.
The expiration date of your passport should be at least 6 months later than the date when you arrive in US. However, it's highly recommended for every DD student to update their passport before heading to US.
The first step to apply for a US visa is to pay I-901 fee, which is required for every F-1 visa applicant to support SEVIS system. In 2024, the fee was $350 per applicant. When the payment is done, the system would provide a downloadable PDF version of I-901 fee payment confirmation. Print it out and bring it to the visa interview as a necessary document.
The next step is to fill in DS-160 form. At the beginning of the fill-out process, the system would ask the applicant to set a security question and an answer. Remember to set down them and your application ID so that you could continue from where you've done last time if you exit the process halfway by typing in the application ID.
After you finish the fill-out process, you should print out the confirmation page of it. Remember to bring it to the visa interview as a necessary document.
After you fill out DS-160 form, you would be able to schedule your visa interview! CGI website is currently the official website for US visa interview. The website would charge an interview application fee at the beginning, and you should enter the date scheduling page with your application fee payment receipt number as permit. After you determine the interview date, you would get access to a downloadable PDF version of the interview confirmation, which should be printed out and brought to the interview as well.
Don't leave visa interview until the last minute! Since other new and transfer students from outside JI need to choose from multiple offers, the later the interview appointment, the fewer the available slots for the interviews become. For reference, in 2023, the earliest slot available was about 2 weeks later if you reserved the slot during the spring break. However, if the student chose to reserve the slot in late June or July, the earliest slot available might be 3 weeks or 1 month later than that. Some students even had to go to other cities for interview because they reserved the slot too late.
The applicant needs to choose the way he/she receives his/her passport back when scheduling the appointment. The cost of EMS home-delivery is RMB106. The applicant could also pick up his/her passport at any branch of the Citic Bank with a pick-up fee of RMB77. There is also a designated branch in each city where the applicant could pick up passport for free. As for Shanghai, it's the 1st floor in the Pacific Plaza.
The visa interview location in Shanghai is on the 8th floor of Meilong Plaza.
Bags, luggage, food, liquids and mobile phones are prohibited in the consulate. It's suggested that the student go to the interview location along with someone else so that he/she could take care of your personal items when you're in the consulate. If you're going to the interview alone, you could deposit your personal items on the 1st floor of Hengshun Building.
The order of entering the consulate is completely based on the appointment time, so just skip the queue, head straight to the entrance and show staff your appointment confirmation page for entrance permission as long as it's your reserved time slot.
Follow instructions from the staff after entering the consulate. The staff will first check all your relevant materials, then you'd be led to a room with multiple windows for fingerprint collection and face-to-face interview. When the interview's done, the visa officer would collect your passport and hand out a script of the application result. The color of the script indicates the final decision.
Passed
Blue
Blue
Pink
Pink
Refused
White
White
White
Yellow
Administrative processing
Uncertain
Green
Green
Uncertain
The result of administrative processing means that the officer hasn't made the decision and will determine later, and the final decision would be updated on the visa status check website.
I-20 won't be handed to students unless they show that they have sufficient financial resources to support their study at the university. On the Enrollment Connect website, there's a button saying "Request I-20". Click into the button, and there'll be an empty version of the Financial Resource Statement. (see for example)
There is only one chance to submit the materials. If there are any additional documents required to be submitted, please send them to the email . It usually takes 2-6 weeks for admission office to check the materials, and the result would be informed by email. However, based on experience from previous years, early submission doesn't necessarily guarantee early check result.
University of Michigan Enrollment Connect
WolverineAccess:
University of Michigan Admission Financial Resource Statement:
DS-160 Fill-out Online:
I-901 Fee Payment Online:
CGI (Visa Interview Appointment):
Visa status check:
