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Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Absolute scam. My son paid €299 in January. Had a 5 minute screening interview. This payment was to include getting a job. Every job he went into on website was gone as soon as he applied. Tried also... See more

Company replied

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

I've had the best experience so far working with Roisin. She's punctual, patient and very resourceful. I was having issues along the way, which was very time consuming I must say. She guided the proce... See more

Company replied

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

I went to camp on a J1 and this being my first time was quite confusing at some points, luckily I had an amazing help along the way! Niall couldn’t have been any more insightful or communicative along... See more

Company details

  1. Travel & Vacation

Written by the company

Where have you dreamed to go but never dared? Let USIT guide you. We are Ireland's leading specialist in student travel, work abroad and intern/trainee programmes to the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand offering unrivalled service and expertise so that you can enrich your world by experiencing new ones.


Contact info

4.0

Great

TrustScore 4 out of 5

326 reviews

5-star
4-star
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1-star

Replied to 33% of negative reviews

Typically replies within 1 month

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Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Very helpful

Very helpful. The team has been great in responding timely and providing advice regarding the Embassy Appointment. Thanks Craig!

4 February 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 2 out of 5 stars

Last J1 with with USIT.

I did 3 J1s with USIT between 2023 and 2025. In 2023, the experience was very smooth, with no issues of note. In 2024, the process was mostly problem-free, although response times began to slow somewhat. Last year was a disaster.

There were repeated and avoidable issues. Most notably, incorrect dates were printed on my DS-2019. Although I now understand that such corrections can be completed within two to three days, it took USIT four weeks to resolve this, and only after I proactively contacted them for an update. This delay directly affected my departure date and ultimately forced me to amend my DS-2019 again at an additional cost of €100 to me.

Communication was consistently poor. When emailed, responses frequently took over a week, with one instance taking eleven days. When replies did arrive, the tone and substance of the support were often dismissive rather than helpful. Because the response times from email where so slow, i called, was told they were busy, and I'd get a call back an hour later. Never received a call.

To add insult to injury, lots misleading advertising practices in relation to their job listings. The number of available jobs was grossly exaggerated, with the total number of positions being conflated with the number of distinct job listings. When I queried this, my concerns were dismissed. This is particularly concerning given that access to their “find a job” hub costs €300.

I am completing a graduate visa this year, and chose to go with CIEE instead. So far, the experience with CIEE has been much better, particularly in terms of communication, and overall support.

Lest we not forget, this is the same company that declared bankruptcy during COVID, refused to refund the thousands of students from whom it had taken thousands of euros, and was subsequently bought out by the former CEO who presided over that bankruptcy in order to continue operations. Can't make it up.

1 March 2025
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Worst customer service ever

Worst customer service ever! The agent asked irrelevant personal questions, gave me wrong and misleading information, and hung up on me. Completely unprofessional and frustrating.

19 January 2026
Unprompted review
Rated 5 out of 5 stars

J1 Grad Visa

Managed to get my J1 grad visa sorted within 3 three weeks with the help of USIT. Cristi and Aaron were really patient and helpful.

19 September 2025
Unprompted review
Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Excellent Support and Service from USIT

Throughout the booking process, the USIT team has been very helpful and supportive at every stage. In particular, Aaron D has been excellent to work with, always quick to reply and clear in answering any questions. His help made the whole experience much easier, and I would highly recommend both him and the USIT team for their great service.

1 September 2025
Unprompted review
Rated 1 out of 5 stars

You are a disgrace

You are a disgrace of a company. Keeping money paid for a visa that was never going to be granted. I am not responsible for the President of America cancelling visa interviews yet I am paying for it. I’m contacting my solicitor and the media. You cannot get away with this abuse of students.

16 June 2025
Unprompted review
USIT logo

Reply from USIT

We're sorry to hear that you've been impacted by the recent embassy closures. Unfortunately, USIT has no control over the actions or decisions of the U.S. Embassy, and we understand how frustrating these delays and disruptions have been, especially during such an important time for summer travel.
If you'd like to explore alternative travel options, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email. We're here to help. The USIT Team

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Awful company avoid at all costs

Would give 0 stars if I could. Compared to the other j1 companies they are awful. Told me in February that it would be impossible to do my j1 visa and will not refund the deposit. Then I went with j1 Ireland who sorted me out with no hassle. Staff are useless when you ring them up looking for help they are simply not interested in helping

10 April 2025
Unprompted review
USIT logo

Reply from USIT

This is not the level of service we aim to provide, and we completely understand how frustrating it must have been—especially with the importance of timely travel for your program.We take feedback like this seriously and are actively working to improve our response times and customer support, especially during peak seasons. - The USIT Team

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Great Customer Service

Great Customer Service, always very helpful when I had an issue, especially Rob!

14 May 2025
Unprompted review
USIT logo

Reply from USIT

Thank you for taking the time to leave your review. We appreciate all feedback and will be sure to share this with Rob!

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

Adel Saved Our J1 - Real MVP of USIT

To be honest, our experience with USIT was a bit frustrating and slow at the start - there was a lot of confusion, delays, and lack of clear communication. It wasn’t until we were helped by Adel Smith that things completely turned around. Adel was incredibly efficient, responsive, and genuinely helpful. She got everything moving quickly and clearly explained every step of the process. Without her, we honestly don’t think we would’ve made it out on time for our J1.

When the right people are involved, like Adel, USIT really shines. The support came fast, personal and stress free once she stepped in. If the whole process was as smooth as our experience with her, the overall service would be 5 stars. USIT is lucky to have her she made all the difference

13 May 2025
Unprompted review
USIT logo

Reply from USIT

Thank you for taking the time to leave your review. We're sorry to hear that your experience at the beginning of the process didn’t meet expectations. Your feedback is valuable, and we’ll be sharing it with the relevant departments to help us improve.

We're delighted to hear that Adel made a positive impact — we agree she’s truly 5*! We’ll be sure to pass on your kind words to her.

Thank you again for your feedback.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

Absolute scam

Absolute scam. My son paid €299 in January. Had a 5 minute screening interview. This payment was to include getting a job. Every job he went into on website was gone as soon as he applied. Tried also getting his own job with no success but too late now to progress with visa application. USIT have €299 for doing nothing. They need to refund the people that they didn't get jobs for as they haven't fulfilled their part of the contract.

12 May 2025
Unprompted review
USIT logo

Reply from USIT

We’re sorry that your experience using USIT’s Job Hub did not work out as you were hoping.

Our Job Hub has been live for the 2025 summer season since October, and has seen high volumes or Irish ‘hotspot’ location jobs available until mid-February, seeing hundreds of students receiving placements in their preferred locations. Interest in certain areas of the US has been unprecedented this season and employers have reported high levels of interest for jobs, making positions more competitive. In addition to Job Hub access and our schedule of virtual hiring events, Job Assistance customers also have access to in-person hiring events in Dublin, including our Chicago hiring event where almost 150 students secured their summer placements.
Our Jobs team also notify students of weekly ‘job drops’, sharing dates and times of jobs being added to ensure that everyone has a fair chance of signing up for an interview in their preferred locations. Whilst we can guarantee interviews with US employers, ultimately securing a position is the hiring decision of the employers that we work with.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

The J1 job portal is awful!

The J1 job portal is oversubscribed and not fit for purpose. We had three lads trying to get a guaranteed’ job via usit (each of them paid €300 to date). There is a huge issue with the fact that they are only allowed to apply for one job at a time. It takes over 2 weeks to be process and released back to the portal if you are unsuccessful. The lads applied for and were unsuccessful at a number of jobs which brought them to the start of May. Jobs were then not available in the location they desired and even if they were processing sponsorship and visas was simply not possible. A waste of time and a lot of money. My advice to anyone looking to use this service is to get a job yourself. I couldn’t recommend it as it is currently structured. Very stressful.

Edited after receiving your stock reply.

Thank you for your response, but I’m afraid it doesn’t address the core issues we experienced.

We fully understand that demand is high and competition for popular locations is tough — that’s not the problem. The problem lies in how inefficient and restrictive the Job Hub system is:
• Limiting applicants to one job application at a time, with a two-week turnaround per rejection, creates unnecessary bottlenecks. In a competitive market, this model makes it near-impossible to secure a role before it’s too late.
• Despite jobs being live since October, many students (including the ones I mentioned) didn’t have the flexibility to apply that early — a reality for lots of people due to academic schedules or financial constraints.
• The idea of “guaranteed” interviews is undermined if the system itself severely limits the number of interviews you can reasonably access within the decision-making window.

It’s also worth noting that while in-person events and job drops may be helpful to some, they don’t solve the issue of lost time and sunk cost for many others who relied on the Job Hub process as promoted.

The end result for us: three students out of pocket, stressed, and ultimately unable to take part in their J1 experience.

To make matters worse, my last email to customer service wasn’t even acknowledged. Extremely unprofessional and frustrating.

I’m sharing this so others go in with realistic expectations — and ideally, so the system can improve.

1 May 2025
Unprompted review
USIT logo

Reply from USIT

We’re sorry that your experience using USIT’s Job Hub did not work out as you were hoping.

Our Job Hub has been live for the 2025 summer season since October, and has seen high volumes or Irish ‘hotspot’ location jobs available until mid-February, seeing hundreds of students receiving placements in their preferred locations. Interest in certain areas of the US has been unprecedented this season and employers have reported high levels of interest for jobs, making positions more competitive.

In addition to Job Hub access and our schedule of virtual hiring events, Job Assistance customers also have access to in-person hiring events in Dublin, including our Chicago hiring event where almost 150 students secured their summer placements.

Our Jobs team also notify students of weekly ‘job drops’, sharing dates and times of jobs being added to ensure that everyone has a fair chance of signing up for an interview in their preferred locations.

Whilst we can guarantee interviews with US employers, ultimately securing a position is the hiring decision of the employers that we work with.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

If I could rate it a 0 star I would

If I could rate it a 0 star I would. There is absolutely no communication on their end to employers. They make you submit the same documents multiple times in multiple places, year after year when all of our information has stayed the same. Then they moved five of our employees from IENA to AAG without informing the employer that they would now have to submit the same documents yet again to somewhere new. The USIT process results in multiple missed deadlines every year because they are not organized and do not communicate well.

22 April 2025
Unprompted review
USIT logo

Reply from USIT

Thank you for your feedback on the J1 visa application process.
The process typically takes 10–12 weeks and involves several stages: candidate screening, job matching, U.S. employer vetting, and scheduling an embassy interview. Timelines can vary depending on the program and sponsor requirements, so applicants may progress at different rates even if they apply at the same time.

We understand the frustration of having to submit documents multiple times. However, due to compliance needs and involvement of multiple sponsors, resubmission is sometimes necessary to ensure accuracy.

We’re committed to improving communication and providing timely updates to all participants. Your feedback is valued, and we remain focused on making the process as smooth and transparent as possible.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

would not recommend

Very bad communication when it came to deadlines. Made up dates as they went along, completely over charge students. Let people pay the extra €200 for the job hub even though they know there were no jobs left. Scam.

4 April 2025
Unprompted review
USIT logo

Reply from USIT

Thank you for leaving your review. We’re sorry to hear about your experience. We aim to provide clear timelines, but delays and changes can happen due to changing sponsor and employer requirements.

The job hub availability can change very quickly, especially during peak times, but we continue to ensure there are jobs consistently uploaded, with over 900 J1'ers hired through the jobs hub this season.

We appreciate your feedback and are working to improve communication and transparency.

– The USIT Team

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