回复：thank you.but my understanding

Maybe your case is a little bit complicated, try my best. I am not sure what forms you filed in 2002 as a H-4 visa holder, you might be married with that visa. So did you file jointly in 2002 with your spouse. If you made the election to file jointly in 2002, I don't think you could file nonresident return except filed married separately and claims the treaty benefit $5,000. My understanding of treaty is that once you are holding F-1 student visa, automatically exempted those days in USA and filing NR returns. My experience told me that in most of case, filing jointly will have benefits considering the standard deduction and lower rate with higher bracket. Better to have a software to calculate jointly and separately. Not sure this will help you or not?