The Optional Practical Training (OPT) is the single most nerve-wracking aspect of being an international student. OPT documentation is what allows international students on an F-1 visa to be employed in the United States after graduation. But there’s a catch—it’s temporary. After making a home in the US for four years, we’re given a strict timeline to find a job, work for up to 36 months, and either get lucky enough to find sponsorship for a work visa from an employer, or eventually pack up our lives and leave.
Many take advantage of the OPT time and then head elsewhere; those born under a lucky star manage to get sponsorship, while some avoid the process altogether and immediately seek out a job abroad post-graduation.
The puzzling part is that, regardless of how badly most of us would like to stay in the U.S. post-grad, an overwhelming majority of internationals confine their job search to the New York Metropolitan Area. If it’s not already nagging you by sophomore spring, it creeps up on you during your junior year. By senior year, it’s all-consuming—if you haven’t already secured a job in New York, the frenzied search begins.
A friend of mine recently sent out an email to a professor who has previously helped international students secure full-time offers. In the email, he mentioned the industries he was interested in, as well as potential locations: he specified he wanted to be in the United States, but “preferably New York.”
It’s crazy to think that, with all the hurdles that are already in place for international students to stay in the United States after graduation, we also set one for ourselves: restricting our own job search to a strip of land nestled between the Hudson and the Harlem.
My friend’s sister, who graduated from Yale last year, is currently working in Boston. When I asked how she liked living and working there, she told me she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I immediately thought, “but what about New York?” as if my mind had been preconditioned to see New York as the only viable option for a life in the United States after Yale.
What I’m trying to understand is why is this the case—why is it that for so many internationals, it’s New York or nowhere?
Some people say it’s because the opportunities in New York are like nowhere else. In a way, the appeal could simply be attributed to the city’s reputation as the place to kickstart your career. Many Europeans specifically will tell you that, apart from being the one major American city closest in distance to Europe, it’s also the “most European.”
“Think about the urban environment; it’s probably one of three walkable cities in this country,” said Liam Hamama, DC ’25.
And that is definitely true—like many European cities, New York is walkable, has efficient public transportation, and also has a lot of European influence in terms of culture and customs. Of course, when a city provides a familiar lifestyle, that can be enough to make it a top-tier option for post-grad life. But there is more to the International Student-to-New York pipeline than that.
New York is a hotspot of convergence for Yale grads as well as international students all over the United States. Everyone wants to be in New York because they think that everyone else will be there too, and in what becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, that ends up being the case.
This FOMO aspect of New York’s appeal is not about the city itself. In this particular case, the FOMO doesn’t seem to be derived from missing happy hours and dinner parties. Rather, it is an anxiety that comes from the thought that, if we don’t end up in New York, all those we have relied on for the past four years would go on to lead a life separate from us. Despite having different life trajectories, everyone who does end up in New York will at least have the city to share.
There’s an irrational sense of comfort in knowing that, in a city so big, and with so much uncertainty, we would find a bit of what we know—a bit of Yale. It’s a feeling very similar to the one we experienced when we got to college and signed up for OIS. We delved into the unknown with the singular sense of certainty that there were others who we would instantly have something in common with; who, like us, were coming to America for the first time. In New York, we’d be in the same boat as all the Yalies who flock to the city after hanging up their cap and gown. We fear that anywhere else, we’d feel like we were alone on a drifting raft.