Find a Day-1 CPT program that matches your career.
USCIS requires CPT work to be directly related to your major. Pick the career you’re working in (or plan to) and see which Day-1 CPT universities offer the right program alignment.
Why should career path drive your Day-1 CPT choice?
Per USCIS, “CPT must be directly related to a student’s major area of study.” Aligning your Day-1 CPT major with the role you’re actually doing (or want to do) keeps you compliant and sets you up for H-1B and OPT transitions later.
Your CPT job description should be at least partially relevant to your academic field — misalignment is the most common trigger for visa Requests for Evidence (RFEs). The closer your job duties map to specific courses in your program, the more defensible your CPT and downstream H-1B application become.
Browse by career
Pick the path that matches your work
Each career below shows the program codes USCIS accepts as related, plus the universities offering them.
Management
10 schoolsBusiness leadership, operations, and general management roles.
Recommended program codes
Stuck deciding?
How to tell if your job relates to your program
Pull up your job description and your program’s course catalog side by side. Look for overlapping responsibilities and shared technical skills — tools, methodologies, domains. The match doesn’t need to be 1:1, but it should be defensible.
Example
A student is in a Computer Science role but also handles data analysis and project management. In addition to CS / IT programs, they could justifiably consider Project Management (MSPM), Engineering Management (MSEM), or Data Science (MSDS). Comparing the actual job duties to each program’s curriculum makes the alignment defensible.
Personalized guidance
Still unsure which career match is right?
Send us your job description and academic background. We’ll map them to the Day-1 CPT programs that hold up under USCIS scrutiny. Free, no commitment.
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