---
title: "Summer Work Travel Eligibility"
slug: swt-eligibility
section: Applicant Journey
status: stable
description: "The full picture of how the platform decides when a Summer Work Travel applicant is allowed to work in the US — from proving they are a full-time student, to reading and translating their documents, to overlapping the dates their governm…"
last-updated: 2026-06-19
---

# Summer Work Travel Eligibility

# Summer Work Travel Eligibility

The full picture of how the platform decides when a Summer Work Travel applicant is allowed to work in the US — from proving they are a full-time student, to reading and translating their documents, to overlapping the dates their government and their school both permit.

## What This Is For

Summer Work Travel (SWT) lets international students work in the US during their school holidays on a J-1 visa. The US government sets strict rules about who qualifies (you must be a current full-time student) and when each student is allowed to work. Our platform automatically checks every applicant against those rules so we don't accept a student — or a set of work dates — that would put the student, or the program's visa sponsorship, out of compliance.

There are two halves to eligibility, and an applicant must clear both:

- Are you a qualifying student? Proof of full-time enrollment, plus verified vacation dates. This is the Proof of Student Status step.

- Are these dates allowed? The work dates must fall inside the window where the student is both permitted (by their government) and free (by their school) to work. This is the eligible window.

## The Full Flow, End to End

Here is the whole pipeline, in order. Each step has a clear owner, and one principle holds throughout: Globus decides, the portal only shows the answer.

The US State Department publishes, per country, the months that country's students may
participate. Those windows live in Globus only, as date objects hung off the Program, and
the Globus Rules Engine reads them as the single source.

The windows don't change on a fixed schedule — some seasons nothing changes, sometimes only
a country or two, sometimes nothing for years. So the owner reviews them against the latest
State Department chart and edits only what moved (no bulk reload, no audit trail), then
marks a non-blocking "reviewed / current" flag. The flag never blocks applications or
anything downstream — it just shows when the dates were last confirmed current.

On the Proof of Student Status step, they upload a transcript or an enrollment letter
(accepted equally) and enter their university country and vacation dates.

Two Globus AI capabilities run in sequence: one detects the language, translates, and
extracts the enrollment facts; the other scores how confident it is that the document
proves full-time enrollment. Neither makes the final decision — when confidence is low, it
hands off to a human.

The Rules Engine passes a confident proof, sends an uncertain one to a Globus reviewer
(and asks for a clear letter), and routes a missing one to a follow-up queue. Nothing is
ever auto-rejected.

A verifier — the recruiting partner, or Globus for direct sales — confirms or amends the
dates (that becomes the authoritative record), or asks for proof: a school calendar or a
professor/university verification, both accepted equally.

It overlaps the country's official window with the verified vacation dates to produce the
eligible window — the only stretch the student may actually work.

A soft, non-blocking warning early on (at Proof of Student Status, if the dates don't
overlap), then a hard gate later (at the Camp Contract step: the dates must fit the
eligible window and the work period must be four months or less).

## The Two Windows That Must Overlap

The when can they work half of eligibility comes down to fitting inside two windows at once:

### 1. The country's official window

The US Department of State publishes, for each country, the months when that country's students may participate (it tracks their school calendar) on its official Summer Work Travel program page . A Brazilian student's window is in our winter; a German student's is in our summer.

### 2. The student's own university holiday

Their actual vacation dates from their school — once verified (see below).

### 3. The overlap of the two

A student can only work during the time that falls inside both. We call this their eligible window, and it's automatically calculated and shown to them on the step in the applicant portal.

| Student | Their country's official window |
| --- | --- |
| Brazil | Falls in the US winter (their school summer holiday) |
| Germany | Falls in the US summer (their school summer holiday) |

## Proof of Student Status

Before any dates matter, the applicant has to prove they are a current full-time student. This all happens on the Proof of Student Status step — the same screen in both the applicant portal and the partner portal, with nothing built partner-specific. The step only collects information and shows back the platform's response; it never decides anything itself.

### Proving Full-Time Enrollment

The applicant uploads one of two documents, accepted equally:

- a university transcript, or

- an enrollment letter from their university.

The bar is the same whichever they choose: the document has to establish full-time enrollment for the relevant term. Importantly, the platform does not try to count credit hours to decide this — "full-time" is defined differently in every country and institution, so a clear written enrollment statement is more reliable than a credit tally.

> **No one is ever auto-rejected**
>
> If the evidence doesn't yet prove full-time enrollment, the applicant is routed to the Missing Student Evidence follow-up queue so it can be resolved — never silently declined.

### AI Translation & Check

Those documents arrive from universities all over the world, in many languages and formats. Two separate Globus-controlled AI capabilities do the reading — one translates and reads, the other scores:

- Translation & extraction — detects the language, translates the document, and extracts the enrollment facts (institution, student, term and year, and any explicit full-time enrollment statement). It returns the translation and facts only — no score, no decision.

- Confidence scoring — takes that translated, extracted output and emits a calibrated confidence signal for how sure it is the document proves full-time enrollment, then flags the case for a reviewer when confidence falls below a configurable threshold.

The AI assists but never decides. The Rules Engine takes the AI's facts and confidence and makes the actual call:

| When the AI is… | What happens |
| --- | --- |
| Fully confident it proves full-time enrollment | The applicant passes and clears the Missing Student Evidence queue. |
| Not fully confident | The case goes to a Globus reviewer, and the applicant is asked to supply a letter (or other proof) that states full-time enrollment plainly. |
| Given nothing that proves enrollment | The applicant is added to the Missing Student Evidence queue — never auto-rejected. |

The confidence threshold that decides when the AI must hand off to a human is configurable, and both capabilities are owned and tuned by Globus in program configuration — the portal only uploads the file.

### Verifying the Vacation Dates

Because vacation dates drive work-period eligibility, they can't simply be taken at face value — they have to be verified before the platform trusts them. The applicant enters their dates, and then:

- A verifier — the partner who recruited them, or Globus for direct-sales applicants — accepts or amends the dates. That confirmation becomes the authoritative record, with a full audit trail of who verified and when.

- If the verifier can't confirm them, they ask for proof. The applicant can supply a school calendar or a professor / university verification — both accepted equally.

> **Professor / university verification**
>
> This works like an applicant reference: the applicant names a professor or university contact, that person receives a request (with reminders) and submits their verification, and a Globus reviewer reviews it. It is a new, dedicated flow — modeled on the reference process but kept separate from Reference Management. Only verified dates are passed on to the eligible-window calculation.

## The Eligible Window & the Two Checkpoints

Once the country's window and the verified vacation dates are both known, the eligible window is simply the overlap of the two — the only stretch of time the student is both permitted and free to work. The platform calculates it and shows it to the applicant; they never have to work it out themselves. It is then enforced in two places:

- A friendly preview, early on. On the Proof of Student Status step, the applicant sees their eligible window right away. If their dates don't overlap their country's window, they get a gentle warning — guidance, not a hard stop — so they can keep going and fix it.

- A firm check, later. When the actual work dates are set at the Camp Contract step, the platform enforces the rule for real: the dates must sit inside the eligible window, and the work period must be four months or less. Anything outside that is blocked and routed for review.

> **One simple rule, two inputs**
>
> Eligible window = the country's official DOS window intersected with the student's verified vacation dates. If those two never overlap, there is no eligible window — and the applicant is flagged so it can be resolved before any commitment is made.

## Behind the Scenes

A few design choices keep this trustworthy and consistent across the whole ecosystem:

- Globus does the deciding; the portal just shows the answer. Every decision — full-time enrollment, date verification, the eligible window — is made by the Globus Rules Engine , not by the applicant portal. The portal collects and reflects; it never invents its own version of the rules.

- AI assists, humans decide. One AI capability translates and extracts, another scores the confidence, but a person (via the Rules Engine's review routing) makes the final call whenever there's any doubt.

- The country windows come from one official source. The per-country months are loaded from the US Department of State's published SWT dates ( j1visa.state.gov/programs/summer-work-travel ) and kept in Globus only — held as date objects hung off the Program that the Rules Engine reads as the single source, while HubSpot just stops banned countries upstream. The owner edits the existing dates in place rather than reloading a fresh set, and because the windows change irregularly — sometimes only a country or two, sometimes nothing for years — currency is tracked with a non-blocking "reviewed / current" flag the owner marks off, not a hard deadline, so nothing downstream is ever blocked.

- One step, both portals. The Proof of Student Status step and its rules run identically in the applicant portal and the partner portal — nothing partner-specific is built.

## How This Is Being Built

The runtime for all of this lives in the Globus core and applicant-portal repos, tracked by the following Asana tickets. (This documentation site only describes the architecture.)

| Area | Ticket | What it owns | Board | Link |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| area | title block text-[11px] font-normal text-muted-foreground mt-0.5 | owns | board | Open |

_(row above is a template, repeated for each data row)_

> **Related pages**
>
> See the Applicant Portal — Eligibility Surface for how the portal renders these decisions, the Rules Engine for the decision pipeline and reason codes, and Pre-Qualification Eligibility for the earlier screening step.