Welcome to the Office of International Students & Scholars
The Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS) at the University of California,
Santa Barbara (UCSB) serves the needs of international students and scholars as
well as the UCSB community who work with this international population. OISS provides
administrative assistance, counseling, advising, and programming to the campus community.
The staff meet with students and scholars about immigration, employment, housing,
health care, financial concerns, academic problems, travel, and personal issues.
Green Card (DV-2011) Diversity Visa Lottery
The U.S. Department of State is now accepting entries for the DV-2011 Diversity Visa Lottery until noon, Eastern Standard Time (EST) (GMT-5) Monday, November 30, 2009. Entries must be submitted electronically.
Applicants may access the electronic Diversity Visa (E-DV) Entry Form at http://www.dvlottery.state.gov/ during the registration period. Paper entries will not be accepted. The Department strongly encourages applicants not to wait until the last week of the registration period to enter. Heavy demand may result in Web site delays. No entries will be accepted after noon, EST, on November 30, 2009. All entries by an individual will be disqualified if more than one entry for that individual is received, regardless of who submitted the entry.
For DV-2011, no countries have been added or removed from the previous year's list of eligible countries. For DV-2011, natives of the following countries are not eligible to apply because the countries sent a total of more than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the previous five years: Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam. Persons born in Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan are eligible.
The full instructions, including details on eligibility and how to apply, are available at http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-24077.pdf. You do not need a lawyer to apply.
Archana Gopal, Graduate Student
Archana Gopalan is truly a global citizen. She was born in the city of Chennai, in Tamil Nadu Province in India but spent her high school years in Bahrain. She returned to her home town of Chennai for her undergraduate training and now she is just finishing her graduate degree at UCSB in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Archana has always been at the top of her class. She was when she was doing her undergraduate work in Electrical Engineering in Chennai and she is here at UCSB. But what about being a woman in a profession dominated by men? Archana is forthright, “It is not intimidating at all by being a minority among men. Rather, it’s a very challenging environment. Fierce competition among peers is in fact very healthy and gets you working even harder towards achieving your goals. You have to make the best choice at the right time.” And she has certainly moved at the right time here. She did a research internship at Apple in the summer of 2008 in a group that worked on compression standards for video processing. She now has number of job offers for her post-completion practical training and has the enviable dilemma of having to decide between offers from two of the most prestigious computer technology companies in the US.
What was it like being a graduate student at UCSB? Archana says that she always feels very comfortable in the UCSB environment with the ocean right next to campus, great weather, and a large international graduate student population. But she came here because of UCSB’s reputation in Engineering. The professors are helpful and accessible. Engineering pedagogy at UCSB emphasizes practical training and the promotion of critical thinking. And now it’s time to apply what she has learned to a promising career!