Office of International Student & Scholar Services

Practical Training

SEVP Portal


The SEVP Portal is a new feature from DHS that allows OPT and STEM OPT students to view and report address and employer information directly into their SEVIS record. Students who have been approved for OPT Employment Authorization should receive an e-mail from SEVP with instructions for creating a new account for the SEVP Portal.

Students are encouraged to view the instructional videos provided by SEVP to assist in navigating the system:

https://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/sevp-portal-videos

A. Federal regulations do not require students to create an SEVP Portal account. However, SEVP highly recommends that students participating in OPT Employment update their address and employment information through their own SEVP Portal, to ensure their records are accurate and up-to-date.

Also, OPT and STEM OPT students are still required to abide by the OPT and STEM OPT reporting requirements.

A. No. Currently, students participating in CPT do not have access to use the SEVP Portal. In addition, students participating in CPT Employment must receive permission from their academic department and DSO if they wish to change employers.

A. If you have been approved for OPT and received your valid EAD card from USCIS, but have not received an e-mail regarding the SEVP Portal, please e-mail our office at OISSS@tamuk.edu to let us know.

Please include in the subject line of your email: SEVP Portal Account, and attach your EAD card for verification. Our office will review your request and records within 2-3 days and respond to your e-mail once the issue is resolved.

A. If you have been locked out of your SEVP Portal account, please send an e-mail to OISSS with the subject line: SEVP Portal Locked

We will review your request within 2-3 working days and reply to your e-mail to let you know when your account has been unlocked/reset.

A. OPT students may choose to report changes to their address or employment through the SEVP Portal, or to OISSS@tamuk.edu via our OISSS-160 form. Students who report changes to their address, phone number or employment within 10 days through either method will meet the OPT reporting requirements.

Data reported via the SEVP Portal is reported into SEVIS immediately. Data reported to OISSS will be updated into SEVIS within the 21-day reporting time mandated by federal regulations.

A. SEVP sends an automatic e-mail when a STEM OPT student’s “Employment End Date” has been updated by the student or DSO. This e-mail is sent out even if the employment end date is in the future, deleted, or for a previous OPT employer. In these cases, a final evaluation should not be needed from the student.

These e-mails can be very confusing since they do not take the actual end date into account. If you know that you have already met your reporting requirements for STEM OPT, you may ignore the e-mail you received. However, if you have any doubts, please feel free to forward the e-mail to OISSS@tamuk.edu to ask if you should submit an I-983 Final Evaluation.

A. Students cannot update their e-mail addresses through the SEVP Portal. DSO’s must update students’ e-mail address directly in SEVIS. To update your e-mail address, please send an e-mail to OISSS@tamuk.edu with the subject line: Request for Data Validation.  Please attach a completed OISSS-160, Request for Data Validation form, (even if no other information has changed,) that includes your new e-mail address on the form.

For security reasons, we will NOT accept requests to update e-mail addresses that are not provided on a completed OISSS-160 form.

A. Unfortunately, DSOs do not have access to the SEVP Portal and cannot assist students directly with the process of navigating the SEVP Portal. For assistance with this process, please contact the SEVP Response Center at 703-603-3400 or SEVP@ice.dhs.gov.

Prior to contacting the SEVP Response Center, we highly recommend that students review the instructions provided on the Study in the States website:

https://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/navigate-the-sevp-portal