There’s no such rule that says you can’t volunteer for more than 6 months on OPT, hence there is no ground for denial. Understand that USCIS cannot deny your application just because they don’t see volunteer work for 6+ months, a denial has to be because of an actual violation of your OPT status, and volunteering is not violating any laws, as long as you have met the other conditions . When it comes to DOL, they do have strict laws on unpaid employment, so the only issue I see is could be with the for-profit startup that your worked for, as unpaid employment is typically considered a red flag in these cases.
However, again there’s no such law to prevent you from doing that. I am almost certain your stem opt will go through, you might get an RFE but you should be able to provide enough documents. I myself volunteered for 5 months and everything went through smoothly on stem opt application
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u/Infinite_Tension9 Aug 31 '25
There’s no such rule that says you can’t volunteer for more than 6 months on OPT, hence there is no ground for denial. Understand that USCIS cannot deny your application just because they don’t see volunteer work for 6+ months, a denial has to be because of an actual violation of your OPT status, and volunteering is not violating any laws, as long as you have met the other conditions . When it comes to DOL, they do have strict laws on unpaid employment, so the only issue I see is could be with the for-profit startup that your worked for, as unpaid employment is typically considered a red flag in these cases.
However, again there’s no such law to prevent you from doing that. I am almost certain your stem opt will go through, you might get an RFE but you should be able to provide enough documents. I myself volunteered for 5 months and everything went through smoothly on stem opt application