OPT Data Validation: Student Information
SEVP has provided the following responses to questions related to the spreadsheet with student information:
| What is "OPT number?" Is this an internal unique identifier assigned when OPT is requested? Is there some way to use this number to search for a student? |
- SEVP response: The OPT number is a unique identifier we developed for the project that can be used to identify a student’s SEVIS record. If DSOs have any questions on students, we can use the number to identify them.
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| Would it be possible to add the fields and data for: SEVIS ID number; Date of birth; OPT end date (to sort in terms of priority); Employer name/address (if these fields already contain data)? |
- SEVP response: All spreadsheets have been prepared and nearly 50% have been sent to schools. We did not include SEVIS ID or date of birth based on feedback from our first validation exercise in 2006. A number of schools had privacy concerns based on our inclusion of SEVIS ID and date of birth. If the exclusion of the SEVIS ID or date of birth in the spreadsheet creates serious issues for a school, we can consider sending an updated spreadsheet on an individual basis.
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| Some schools have reported that the spreadsheet received was not password-protected, and the password itself was at the top of the spreadsheet when opened. |
- SEVP response: Thank you for letting us know about this. We apologize for the spreadsheets being sent with no password and will follow up on our end to try to determine why there is no protection on some spreadsheets. We did take a number of steps to ensure all spreadsheets would be password protected and tested more than 50 spreadsheets for password protection. When sending the spreadsheets, members of the validation team run a macro to password protect the spreadsheets prior to attaching them to the message. We found that one of our team members was attaching the spreadsheet to the email without saving it after running the macro to lock it. We apologize for the oversight. At this point, we can confirm that it has been discovered and should not be an issue moving forward.All spreadsheets contain a school code. When preparing the spreadsheets, we needed to include the code for the macro which password protects the sheet but also reads the cell with the school code to set it as the password.
- NAFSA note: Schools can "password protect" a spreadsheet by following these instructions:
- On the File menu, click Save As.
- On the Tools menu, click General Options.
- If you want users to enter a password before they can view the workbook, type a password in the Password to open box, and then click OK.
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