USCIS just announced that it selected 13,607 additional beneficiaries in the second round of the FY 2025 H-1B cap. Adding these selections to the first round of 114,017 beneficiaries, a total of 127,624 beneficiaries were selected in this year’s lottery.
There were a total of 442,000 beneficiaries who had H-1B registrations filed for them this year (470,342 registrations, taking duplicates into account). This means that the chance of selection in the 2025 H-1B lottery was nearly 29%.
The graph below shows selection rates for the past five years of H-1B lotteries. Back in 2021 when demand was much lower due to COVID, the selection rate was 46%. As the economy began to normalize in subsequent years, the selection rate dropped significantly into the mid twenty percent range.
Seeing the selection rate come back up a bit this year is encouraging. Not only is the rate no longer dropping, but it is actually trickling back up. This is partially due to USCIS’s new effort to reduce duplicate filings by selecting beneficiaries themselves, rather than registrations.
The other thing to consider with this graph is that these acceptance rates are averaged between the regular H1B cap and the advanced US degree cap. Beneficiaries who have an advanced degree from a US university have a much higher chance of selection than those whose registrations are lodged under the regular cap.
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