US Visa Statistics

US Government website: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-statistics.html  has raw visa statistics.
After Trump’s presidency has started, the number of issues F1 visa are on decline. A total of 393, 573 F1 visas were issued in 2017.

Year	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
F1 Visas	534,320	595,569	644,233	471,728	393,573

Here’s a comparison for top other visa segments such as H1B (Temporary work visa), B1/B2 (Temporary business and pleasure visa) and F1 (student visa)

Year	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
B1/B2	5,645,580	6,276,997	7,199,807	6,881,797	6,276,851
F1	534,320	595,569	644,233	471,728	393,573
H1B	153,223	161,369	172,748	180,057	179,049

Source
Specific to India, an article by Factly.in has excellent data points. The Trump effect is real!

F1 Visas Issued to Indians (factly.in)

Chennai consulate has granted highest number of F1s.

F1 Visas by Consulate, Chennai Wins (factly.in)

I’ve read some threads suggesting to take appointment at one consulate over other because it has higher visa issue rate. In my opinion, that’s not true and every consulate has equal visa issue rates. Make rational selection for consulate so that if asked, you can give valid rationale to the VO.