Daddy, When someone comes in with a J1 visa,they have 2 year home residency requirement. However, it can be waived off and change to any other status after that. Is your friend's program funded by any organisation/government? If it is then there is little chnace of getting ur waiver application approved.If it's funded by yourself,then it's not a problem,but it's really a long process though. Steps for applying: 1) Send the application(Form DS-3035) to US department of State(I think it's Application for waiver of 2 year home residency requirement).They will send a letter acknowledging the receipt of ur application and will ask for NOC(No Objection Certificate) from Nepalese Embassy in DC and a letter from you stating why you want the waiver,DS-2019 etc.You will also get the case number which you have to write on the correspondence that u send to Nepalese Embassy. 2) Send the application and ur letter of intent to Nepalese Embassy request the NOC. ( I was lucky that I got NOC within a week,but for one of my friend it took almost 2 months and that too calling them so many time.U know how professional they are) 3) Embassy will send a NOC diirectly to the US department and will send u a copy too. After the US department of State receives all the required documents comes the real part.It will take forever to get it approved,but depends on which service center it's being processed.Mine was in Texas and took forever.At one point I used to buy phone card and call the Service center to speak to the customer service about my application(you will be kept on hold for hours).It took about 5/6 months to get the approval. 4) Us dept. of State will send a letter of recommendation to INS directly and a copy of the same letter.After this you are pretty much set.You can atleast change to F1 at this point. 5) Final stage is waiting for approval from INS which is also a long process. Process takes a long time,but can be done.I changed mine to F1 to do my MBA.One of my friend changed his directly to H1b. Good luck and let me know if u need more help. Khuitte