• Students must have been enrolled full-time for at least nine months (two consecutive semesters)
• Students must have completed at least one semester at NC State
• Students must be maintaining lawful F-1 status
• Students must be in good academic standing
• Students must be making normal progress toward their degree
• Students must obtain the recommendation of their Academic Advisor (for undergraduate students) or Director of Graduate Program (for graduate students)
• Students must not have already engaged in full-time OPT for that particular level of study
• Students must have not worked for 12 months or more on full-time Curricular Practical Training 
• Students must have obtained a new Form I-20 with OPT recommendation from OIS
• Students must file their OPT application while they are physically present in the U.S.
• Students must seek employment directly related to their major

What is Post-Completion OPT?

Post-completion OPT is an employment authorization that students can use after completing the curricular elements of their program.

Undergrads and Non-thesis Masters: You are elgible based on program completion, which is the end of the term where you complete all the courses for your degree. End of term dates are posted in the next section (Application Process).

Thesis Masters and PhDs: There is some flexibilty in your eligibility for post-completion OPT if you have completed all the course-work for your degree and you have met the number of credit requirement. From that point, you have three options:

1. End of the final semester: You can choose the end of your last semester of your program. This option is especially good for students who are doing a TA/RA and need to work on campus until the end of the term.
2. Defense Date: If you are defending during the semester, you can use your defense date as your program end date. All on campus work must stop on your defense date, so this option is good for students who have flexibility with their on campus employment or are not working on campus and want to start OPT as soon as possible after defense. ETD deadlines are not considered in this situation (only defense date). Defense dates that fall between semesters are not eliglbe to be used as program end dates, you would need to use the end of the final semester, which would be just before your defense date.
3. All But Dissertation (ABD): If you have compelted all the coursework and met the credit requirements AND you have a job offer, you can apply for post-completion OPT based on the job offer date. Your program end date will be the day before the job offer date. You can’t use an ABD date unless you are enrolled in that semester (which can be an issue if your job starts in the summer).

What is Pre-Completion OPT?

Fall 2026 Update: We have been seeing reports that standard Pre-completion OPT applications with USCIS are not being processed or are taking many months (6-10 months). Due to that, students may want to consider using premium processing when applying for Pre-completion OPT.

Pre-completion OPT is an employment authorization that students may be eligible to apply for during their academic program. In order to be eligible for pre-completion OPT you must meet all the above listed eligibility criteria. Additionally, although you are not required to have a job offer to apply, we strongly encourage you to have a job offer to ensure you use the benefit. Pre-completion OPT can only be used if your requested OPT start and end dates will be during your academic program.

Any pre-completion OPT time used during the student’s program will be deducted from the student’s post-completion OPT eligibility time. This time is subtracted at half-time for part-time authorization. For example, if you used 2 months of full-time pre-completion OPT, you would have 10 months of post-completion OPT available upon graduation. If you used 2 months of part-time pre-completion OPT, you would have 11 months of post-completion OPT available upon graduation. For this reason, pre-completion OPT is rare as students often choose to save their OPT authorization until after they complete their program.

If you believe that you will need to apply for pre-completion OPT or are not sure which authorization you may be eligible for, please make an appointment with your OIS advisor to discuss your options and the application process.

CPT Impacts on OPT

If you engage in more than 11 months and 29 days of full time CPT, you become ineligible for OPT. Please note that this only applies to FULL-time CPT, not part-time CPT.