How to Fill Out and Submit the ASU Financial Guarantee Form

ASU’s Financial Guarantee Form is the document international students use to prove they can pay for one academic year at Arizona State University, and ASU’s International Students and Scholars Center (ISSC) must approve it before issuing the Form I-20 for F-1 students or the DS-2019 for J-1 exchange visitors. The form has five sections covering your personal information, program and cost, dependents, funding sources, and any existing visa record. Until the ISSC receives the completed form with supporting bank documentation and confirms the funds meet the required amount, it cannot create your SEVIS record, which means you cannot schedule a visa interview.¹

What to Have Ready Before You Open the Form

Pull everything together first. Most delays come from applicants starting the form and then stopping to hunt down a missing document or request a fresh bank letter. You will need:

Your passport, so the name on the form matches it exactly.
Your ten-digit ASU Affiliate ID, assigned when you applied. Write it on every page of every document you submit.²
A bank statement or bank letter dated within the last six months. It must show the account holder’s name, the account type, and a current balance covering one full year’s cost of attendance.¹
Scholarship or assistantship letters, if any. These need to sit on department letterhead, state the exact award amount and duration, and carry an authorized signature.³

Certified English translations for any financial document in another language, submitted alongside the original.1
Sponsor details if someone else is paying. You need their full name, relationship to you, and contact information, plus their own bank documentation.

How Much Funding You Need to Show

Your documented funds must meet or exceed ASU’s estimated cost of attendance for one academic year for your specific program. The form prints the figure for each program level, and that is the number to use. Graduate costs vary by college and program fees, so do not substitute a general tuition estimate.

Bringing family changes the total. The 2026–2027 form requires an additional $7,000 for a spouse and $5,000 for each dependent child, added on top of your program cost in the funding calculation table in Section 3.²

What Counts as Funding

ASU accepts only liquid assets: personal savings, checking accounts, and already-matured certificates of deposit. Scholarships and graduate assistantships also count when the award letter meets the requirements above.¹

What Will Not Be Accepted

Real estate, retirement accounts, projected future income, life insurance policies, and stock portfolios are all excluded.¹ If your family’s wealth sits in property or investments, you will need to move enough into a qualifying bank account before the statement is issued, or your submission will come back short.

Filling Out the Form, Section by Section

The form is a PDF available through ASU’s student resources site, and it uses the American month/day/year date format throughout.²

Section 1: Student Information

Enter your first, middle, and family names exactly as they appear on your passport, along with your home country address, ten-digit ASU Affiliate ID, date of birth, city and country of birth, and country of citizenship. Any mismatch between the name here and the name on your passport will send the form back for correction, so check spelling and name order before moving on.

Section 2: Program Selection and Financial Information

Choose your program level (bachelor’s, graduate, doctoral, or Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law) and enter the cost figure the form lists for that level in U.S. dollars. Use the printed figure rather than looking up tuition separately. The amount already includes estimated living expenses alongside tuition.

Section 3: Family Information

List each accompanying dependent with full name, gender, birthplace, citizenship, country of permanent residence, and date of birth. The table then adds $7,000 per spouse and $5,000 per child to your program cost to produce your total required funding. Leave the section blank if you are coming alone.

Section 4: Types of Funding

Check the box for each source of your money: personal funds, family funds, a scholarship, an outside sponsor, or an ASU teaching or research assistantship offer letter. If you are combining sources, indicate the dollar amount from each. The total has to meet or exceed what Section 3 calculated.

Section 5: Visa Information

This section applies only if you already hold an active SEVIS record, which is the case for students transferring from another U.S. school. If so, provide your SEVIS ID, U.S. address, last date of attendance or Optional Practical Training, and your current designated school official’s contact information. First-time applicants coming from abroad can leave most of these fields blank.

If You Have More Than One Sponsor

When two or more people are funding your education (for example, a parent paying tuition and an uncle paying housing), you submit a separate Financial Guarantee Form for each sponsor. Every sponsor provides their own current bank letter or statement, and the combined total has to meet your required funding amount. Each sponsor signs their own copy. ASU accepts wet-ink signatures and verified electronic signatures.⁴

Government or Employer Sponsorships

If a government agency or employer is paying, you submit a sponsorship letter on official letterhead instead of a personal bank statement. The letter must include your full name, your ASU ID number, the specific academic terms covered, exactly which charges the sponsor will pay (tuition, fees, housing, and so on), either a maximum dollar amount or a statement that the sponsor covers 100 percent, a billing address, a contact person’s name, email, and phone number, and an authorized signature.⁴

One detail trips up sponsored students regularly. ASU’s Student Business Services will not accept guarantee letters conditioned on maintaining a minimum GPA, passing specific classes, or receiving financial aid.⁴ If your sponsor’s standard template includes those conditions, ask for a separate unconditional letter for ASU. You also need to email a PDF of the letter to sponsorbilling@asu.edu by the tuition payment deadline, in addition to uploading it the regular way.⁵

How to Submit

Upload the completed form and all supporting documents through the Financial Guarantee eForm. From the ISSC eForms page, open the self-service portal and look under the Sponsored Student menu on the left side of the screen.⁵ All files must be PDFs, and each attachment is capped at 5 MB.⁶ Write your ten-digit ASU Affiliate ID on every page of every document before scanning, because this is how staff match loose pages to the right student file.

Check your dates before uploading. Bank statements and bank letters must be dated within six months of submission, and if you gathered documents early and then delayed, an expired statement will be sent back.¹

What Happens After You Submit

Allow about three business days for the ISSC to log your upload. Staff then review submissions within seven to ten business days to confirm completeness and verify that your funding covers one academic year.⁷ Processing can run longer in the weeks right after admission decisions go out.⁶

If anything is wrong or missing, you will get an email and an updated priority task asking for the specific document. Once everything checks out, ASU generates the I-20 (or DS-2019 for J-1 visitors) and emails your @asu.edu address with a link to download it from the Document Portal in My ASU. Nothing arrives by mail; print the document and sign it yourself before your visa interview.⁷ Your ASU email forwards to your personal account at this stage, so check your spam and junk folders so the notification does not slip past you.

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Arizona State University. Financial Guarantee
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Arizona State University. ASU Financial Guarantee Form
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Arizona State University. Financial Guarantee Lettera>
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Arizona State University. Financial Guarantee Letter
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Arizona State University. Financial Guarantee
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Arizona State University. Receiving Documents
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Arizona State University. International Student Visa