Visa Task Force
You have limited logins per day to the website. Limited number of clicks. Slots for Visa appointment open up across 5 consulates — Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata — at any random time. There’s no way to tell when or how many would open up. You check at the wrong time(when there aren't any slots), then you waste your logins and clicks. You exhaust your clicks then you have to wait till 00.00 EST for clicks and logins to reset. You login too many times or click to check availability of slots too many times, your account gets suspended for 72 hours for suspicious activity. There are close to 30000 thousand students out of whom 90% didn't yet book a slot or complete their visa interview and are waiting for slots to open . Pouncing on any slot when it opens. Getting errors. Getting locked out. The day to report at their US universities is nearing. Some have postponed their plans from last year and eagerly waiting to go this year. Some have planned everything out to go this year and are desperately trying to get that visa slot so they can pursue their plan A for the year.
A lot of Indians go abroad every year to pursue their higher education. The most preferred of the destinations — USA. For being known as the best country, having the best universities, opportunities and for being famously known as the “land of dreams”.
Corona virus disrupted the lives of everyone directly or indirectly. It affected the plans of these higher studies seekers too in a major way. With two surges in the cases in India spaced out by a year, unfortunately perfectly coinciding with the those times of the year in 2020 as well as in 2021 when students start their visa process and other travel plans.
The process goes like this for majority of Indians —
Oct-Jan — apply to universities
Feb-April — get admits and apply for loan
April-July — Book visa appointments, make travel plans, gear up for an education of 2 years in a far off land.
Everything was going smoothly until the cases of Covid-19 started to surge in April 2021. They went on rising for a month till they peaked at close to 4 Lakh cases in Mid may 2021. By then all US consulates had to shut down, cancel appointments that were booked in May and some of the appointments in June.
Come May, when people open the website to book a visa slot, students could see a scanty number of slots scattered from Jun 2021 to Mar 2022.
A lot of students canceled their fall 2020 plans of going to the USA to planned to go in 2021. All these students looking to up to the same website eagerly waiting to book a visa interview slot.
WhatsApp groups, Telegram groups — “Visa slot updates” ,”Visa slots discussion”- a plethora of such groups suddenly sprung up and old ones became very active. Slot booking agents trying to lure in students promising that their special expertise and skill is guaranteed to book a slot for them for a fee. It became imperative to track every small movement and change in slots in the website. As sometimes the slots released could be just a handful that get booked within seconds. Sometimes the slots released could be one ( yea just one slot released).
Visa task force was a discord group started by a few northeastern university admits that i discovered at this point and it was nothing short of accidentally discovering Wakanda. A highly organized group of students with everyone optimally assigned to login-check-update at a designated time slot in the day. So, information of the status of slots was continually pouring in while none of the group members lost logins(except for the login they did at their designated time). A person assigned every 5–10 minutes for every consulate, reporting back to the group whatever they see when they login. whether it was nothing or if it was gold mine of slots. Separate discussion channels for “slot updates” , “visa interview experience” etc.
It was the required teamwork solution perfectly implemented and coordinated. Team work and synergy is the answer in a lot of situations and it’s not by chance that some teams/companies/groups succeed at a particular thing while others dont. It’s the foundational principles, clear goals and inclusive approach to the contribution of everyone is what makes them work.
