Completing Your I-20

Required Documents

To process your transfer I-20, we will need the following documents:

• Financial Certificate.
• Bank Statement. 
• Current/Valid Passport. 
• Current/Valid F-1 Visa. 
• Most Recent I-94.
• Transfer Verification Form.

Please email these documents to the international recruitment team or submit them via your portal. Documents sent to another department will be lost, and our team will not know they were sent. If you choose to submit the documents through the portal, please take a moment to notify our staff via email for timely processing. 

See below for step-by-step instructions on how to complete and submit them.

The Financial Certificate

• Fill out your name, birthday, city and country of birth, and country of Citizenship. 
• If you have several citizenships, you can write them all. However, you can only use one passport for the F-1 visa application, so make sure to think about which passport you wish to use.

• To attend GW, you must apply for an F-1 visa. If you have a green card or permanent resident status, then you do not need to apply for an F-1. If you are not sure, just leave this portion blank. 

• Make sure to inform the Office of Undergraduate Admissions of any residency change.

• Please make sure to submit the total amount required for the George Washington University tuition.

• The Financial Certificate is not considered valid if the minimum amount is not present, and will not be able to be submitted for the I-20 application. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security needs a guarantee that a student will attend and pay tuition before submitting an F1 visa. If you have several sponsors, you can divide the total amount between each. They must add up to the total amount required.

• Please make sure that both segments are signed. We require a signature from both the sponsor and the student.
• If the sponsor is a government agency or scholarship, simply write in their address and the date. No sponsor signature is needed.

The bank statement must have the same name as your sponsor. The I-20 application will not be considered valid if the sponsor names are different on the Financial Certificate and the Bank Statement.

The Bank Statement

Your sponsor's statement must be less than one year old, in English, and funds must be liquid (available for withdrawal without restriction, such as in a checking, savings, or deposit account).

Please make sure that the bank statement has the same name as the sponsor signature on the Financial Certificate. We can accept letters from banks or government scholarships, but they must guarantee the total tuition amount on the bank certificate for the four years of your education. 

For self-sponsored students, we require that you display the ability to pay all four years of required tuition. 

The bank statement MUST display liquid assets. We do not accept: 

• Bank Statements with less than the required minimum amount displayed on the Financial Certificate. 
• Stocks.
• Investments.
• Investment Portfolios.
• Real Estate.
• Any form of virtual or crypto currency.
• Bonds.

Passport

You must submit a current/valid passport. The entire biographical page must be visible, including the two lines of text at the bottom. Your passport must be valid for at least 6 months after your expected date of entry.

Per regulations, we can issue I-20s with expired passports. However, in order to be granted a visa, the passport must be valid for at least 6 months into the future. Therefore, we highly recommend students get their passport renewed before starting the I-20 and visa process.

Visa

You must submit a current/valid F-1 visa. The entire biographical page must be visible, including the two lines of text at the bottom. Your visa must be valid for at least 6 months after your expected date of entry.

I-94

We will need your most recent Form I-94, which provides us with proof of visitor status/a lawful record of admission. Make sure the I-94 is the correct and most current version of the form.

Current I-20

You must submit all three pages of your current I-20. Make sure all pages are signed as needed.

Transfer Verification Form

Please download the form and fill out the top part, then give the form to a school official to finish. Once completed, email the document back to us.

You will receive your new I-20 once you have been released from your initial SEVIS ID number. Make sure to check the date on the Transfer Verification Form.