Will i be able to go to the philippines for a vacation with my F-1 visa before class starts?

Question

i am here in the US now. My tourist visa will expire on june'08.. the immigration gave me 6 months to stay here, from november to may...... i applied for an F-1 student visa last feb and i just got approved this april. Will i be able to go back to the philippines first to have a vacation before class starts? if yes, will i have a hard time going back to the US? because some says that i will have a hard time coming back here in the US because there will be a lot of questions in the embassy and they might not let me go anymore.

Answer 1

It's not clear if you have an actual student visa or not, which makes a big difference. It's possible to apply for change of status from B1/B2 to F1 through USCIS. If that's what you did, you will need a valid student visa to return to the US and go to class. So, you would have to spend some time at the embassy in Manila, which you seem to already be familiar with anyway. As long as you remain in status on your tourist visa, you shouldn't have that many problems applying for a student visa. You'd need your I-20 and the school would need to put you in the SEVIS database before you could actually apply for the student visa.