What to do after you land, in order

The on-campus jobs go in week one, the bank wants an ID you do not have yet, and the internship closes a year early. A checklist of what I did late, with the official page linked at every rule.

Nobody hands you this list. You get an orientation about campus safety and a tour of the library, and four months later you find out the on-campus jobs were gone in week one, the bank wanted an ID you did not have, and the internship you wanted closed applications while you were still learning the bus routes. Here is the order I wish somebody had given me.

Before you land, or the week you arrive

The single most expensive misunderstanding is that the first month is for settling in. It is not. The first month is when the competition for everything on campus is decided, and plenty of people started before their flight.

  • Start asking about on-campus jobs now. You may work up to 20 hours a week while school is in session and full time during breaks, and you can approach it up to 30 days before classes start. Study in the States sets out the rules.
  • Talk to people, not job boards. Most campus positions are filled through somebody who already works there telling somebody they know. Seniors, lab managers, the front desk of your own department. That is not networking in the LinkedIn sense. It is asking a human being who is already in the room.

The documents, in dependency order

These four have to happen in roughly this sequence, because each one is the input to the next. That is the part nobody explains: you cannot skip ahead, so starting late does not cost you a week, it costs you a chain.

  1. A job offer, on campus or off, whichever your school allows

    You
    This is what unlocks the Social Security Number. Rules on which jobs count vary by school and by status, so confirm yours with your international student office first.

  2. The Social Security Number

    You, with two letters
    You need evidence of identity, immigration status and enrollment, a letter from your DSO, and a letter from your employer. The SSA booklet for international students lists exactly what to bring. Apply the moment you are eligible.

  3. A state ID or driver licence

    You
    Carrying your passport around as everyday identification is a bad idea, and losing it is a category of problem all of its own. Banks, bars and most offices want a state ID.

  4. A credit card, and the credit history it starts

    You
    Most banks want that ID before they will issue one. Your credit history starts from zero on the day you open the first account, and nothing makes it start earlier later on, which is why the date you begin matters more than which card you begin with.

Money you are already owed, or already paid for

Two of these are refunds and two are things your tuition has already bought. All four are routinely missed for the same reason: nobody tells you they exist, because the office that knows assumes another office told you.

  • Social Security and Medicare tax you should not have paid. F-1 students who are still nonresident for tax purposes are generally exempt from FICA on authorized employment. If it was withheld anyway, you ask your employer first, and if they will not refund it you file Form 843 and Form 8316. The IRS page explains who qualifies and how to claim.
  • Form 8843, which you file even with no income at all. It is not an income tax return. It is the form that documents why your days in the US do not count toward residency, and there is no income threshold that turns the requirement on. The IRS page for Form 8843.
  • Software and subscriptions. At USC that is Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud at no cost through ITS, and a free New York Times subscription through a graduate student government partnership. The library answer page has the details. Check what your own school has before you pay for any tool.
  • Conference and travel funding. USC graduate students can apply for a GSG Travel Award, capped at 500 dollars per academic year, one per student, intended as a last resort once other sources are exhausted. It requires that you paid the graduate student programming fee, which you probably did without noticing.

The career office you did not know you had two of

Large universities usually run a central career service and a second one inside your own school or department. The second is the one that knows which companies hire from your program, and it is the one students skip.

  • The platforms built for international candidates. USC students get Interstride and GoinGlobal free with their netID, which index postings by visa sponsorship rather than making you guess. The Career Center page lists them.
  • The work authorization workshops. The career centre and the international office run these together, which matters, because CPT and OPT questions usually need both halves of the answer. USC runs them as a joint session.
  • Your school's own service. At USC, engineering has Viterbi Career Services in addition to the central one. Find out what yours is called and use it.

The clock that does not rewind

Everything above can be fixed late at some cost. These cannot, because they are governed by dates that were set before you arrived.

  • CPT generally needs one full academic year of enrollment first. There is an exception where a graduate program requires immediate practical training, but plan for the rule rather than the exception. Study in the States sets out the eligibility.
  • Applications open roughly a year before the job starts. The academic year requirement governs when you may work, not when you may apply. Summer internship hiring at large companies largely happens the autumn before, so the timeline you are aiming at usually means applying before you are eligible to start.
  • OPT has a filing window, and it closes. It opens a fixed number of days before your program end date and closes a fixed number after, and your DSO has to enter the recommendation into SEVIS before you file. Premium processing exists for the application if you are late, and it costs money you did not need to spend. USCIS explains the request.

The checklist, with nothing else around it

  • Ask about on-campus work immediately, through people rather than portals.
  • Get the job offer, then the SSN, then the state ID, then the credit card, in that order.
  • Never share the SSN with anyone who contacted you first.
  • Check whether FICA was withheld from your pay, and claim it back if it was.
  • File Form 8843 even in a year you earned nothing.
  • Find the free software, subscriptions and travel funding your fees already bought.
  • Register on the international-candidate job platforms your school pays for.
  • Find your department's own career service, not just the central one.
  • Apply for internships a year ahead, even before you are eligible to work.
  • Put your OPT filing window in a calendar the day you get your I-20.

None of this is about working harder than everybody else. It is about doing the same things in an order that does not waste the months you cannot get back. The enjoying part is not the mistake. Doing it instead of this list, in the one month when this list is cheapest to do, is.