I overstayed after visa expiry

[Harish7289]

Hello,

I came to US in 2011 to pursue my masters after that I started working on opt for 3 years in the mean time applied for H1b unfortunately my H1 lottery didn't get picked all the years I applied. So I joined a college on a CPT program in the different city(weekend college) but in first semester I failed to attend two classes I missed my flight which effected my attendance and the school terminated my admission and sevis in Aug 2016. I transferred my sevis to another college trying to get it reinstated in Nov 2016 but I never did. Frustrated with myself I decided to leave to india took care of some errands and I came back in Nov 2017(Overstayed by around 1 year).

Now I applied H1B from india and it got approved in 2022. In the DS 160 form there is a question called have you ever overstayed your visa? Should I select yes? If yes how can I justify the explanation if I select No does the effect?

Please help?

Thanks
Harish

[newacct]

I believe the question asks whether you were unlawfully present, overstayed, or violated the terms of your visa. You may or may not have accrued unlawful presence (usually F1 are admitted on D/S and thus don't accrue unlawful presence, but if you applied to USCIS for some benefit (e.g. reinstatement), and it was denied, you might have started to accrue unlawful presence). "Overstay" and "violated terms of your visa" are not well-defined, but I would say you most likely did violate the terms of F1, because you stayed after being terminated from your program, and did not transfer or get reinstated. "Yes" is the appropriate answer (and you should always answer "yes" when in doubt anyway, since if you are wrong about "yes" they would just disregard it, but if you are wrong about "no" that may be misrepresentation). For explanation just provide a timeline of what happened.