If you are trying to work out which Indian consulate refuses the fewest F-1 applications, the honest answer is that nobody knows, including the sites publishing tables of it.
What the State Department actually publishes
Visa issuance counts. How many visas were issued, by category and by country.
That is not the same as a refusal rate. To turn issuances into a refusal rate you need the number of applications, and that is not published at nationality level. As one analysis of the data puts it plainly: there are no refusal rates provided by the State Department at a nationality level — only issuance totals.
So when you read "61% of Indian F-1 applications were refused in 2025", that figure has been derived, using assumptions about application volumes. It may be roughly right. It is not a published statistic, and it is not measured per consulate.
Per-consulate F-1 refusal rates are not published at all. Any table breaking down Hyderabad versus Mumbai versus Chennai is constructed from something other than official data.
What can reasonably be said about the trend
The estimates disagree on level but agree on direction, and the direction is stark:
| Year | Estimated F-1 refusal rate, Indian applicants |
|---|---|
| 2015 | ~23% |
| 2023 | ~36% |
| 2024 | ~53% |
| 2025 | ~61% |
Other sources put 2024 at 41% and the 2025 global figure at 35%, which is a reminder of how much these vary by method and population. Treat the shape as reliable and any individual number as approximate.
One figure that is a hard count rather than an estimate, and worth more than all of them: F-1 visas issued to Indian students fell 69% — from 41,336 in June–July 2024 to 12,776 in the same months of 2025. That is issuance data, which is what actually gets published.
The question is moot since September 2025
Even if reliable per-consulate rates existed, you could not act on them.
Since September 2025 the State Department requires applicants to interview in their country of citizenship or permanent residence. Applying at a different post to find a softer officer is no longer possible.
Within India, your post is determined by your place of residence. It is not a choice, so a comparison table would be trivia rather than guidance.
Anything advising you to "apply at the consulate with the best approval odds" was written before this rule and is a good marker that the source has not been updated.
What does differ by consulate: wait times
There is real, checkable variation here, and it is the thing worth planning around:
| Post | Reported F-1 appointment wait |
|---|---|
| New Delhi | Shortest reported |
| Mumbai | ~10 weeks |
| Hyderabad | ~2.5 months |
Wait times move constantly. Check the official appointment wait times tool rather than any figure on a blog, including this one.
For a student with a course start date, an appointment wait is a real constraint. A hypothetical difference in refusal odds is not.
What actually moves your outcome
Since the consulate is not a lever, the levers that remain are the ones inside the interview:
- Demonstrable ties to India — the substance of the 214(b) assessment
- Financial coherence — funding that plausibly matches the sponsor's income
- Consistency between your DS-160, your documents and your answers
- A public, coherent online presence — mandatory since June 2025, and an absent one now counts against you. See social media vetting
Why we published this instead of a table
A table of per-consulate refusal rates would rank well. We do not have the data to build one honestly, and neither does anyone else.
This is what our verification process is for: where the underlying figures do not exist, we say so rather than inventing a number that looks authoritative. If the State Department begins publishing refusal rates by post, this page will carry them and the date they were checked.
What applicants told us
[Contributed outcomes by consulate and month. Enough of these would constitute the only real per-consulate dataset anywhere — and would be worth citing.]
Frequently asked questions
Which US consulate in India has the lowest F-1 rejection rate? Nobody knows. Per-consulate refusal rates are not published. And since September 2025 you must interview in your country of residence, so you cannot choose a post regardless.
What is the F-1 rejection rate for Indian students? Estimates range from about 36% in 2023 to about 61% in 2025, with other sources giving 41% for 2024. None is an official published rate — the State Department releases issuance counts, not refusal rates by nationality.
Why do different sites quote different rates? Because all of them are derived from issuance data using different assumptions about application volumes, over different periods and populations.
Is there any hard official number? Yes — issuance counts. F-1 visas issued to Indian students fell 69%, from 41,336 in June–July 2024 to 12,776 in the same months of 2025.
Can I choose which consulate to apply at? No. Since September 2025 you must interview in your country of citizenship or permanent residence, and within India your post follows your place of residence.
What does differ between consulates? Appointment wait times — meaningfully. Check the official wait times tool rather than any published figure.
Official sources
- US Department of State — Visa Statistics
- US Department of State — Visa Appointment Wait Times
- US Embassy & Consulates in India
Verified 29 July 2026. If official per-consulate refusal data is published, this page will be updated to carry it.