Share with you on my I140 application details& experiences
- NIW
- Filed concurrently with I485 to CSC on September 28, 2005
- Transferred to TSC on March 29, 2006
- LUD 5/22/2006
- LUD 6/24/2006
- Approved 6/27/2006
I felt a little lucky that my case was approved without RFE, as I thought it was really a weak one: I had only 3 first-author English papers and 2 first-author Chinese papers, with almost no citations as the English papers were all recently published. I received some fellowship awards from the graduate school but no other outstanding awards. No patents either. I have been a reviewer for different journals/books for a few times. And 10 recommendation letters were prepared, with one from my current boss (professor), one from my previous Ph.D advisor (member of NAE), and the rest ones from independent professors/colleagues in other universities or national laboratories.
If the success of my case was not completely due to good luck, partial of it could be, I believe, attributed to my hard work on those recommendation letters. I drafted all the letters and had the referees sign them with no difficulty. Here I would like to share a few thoughts that you might find useful:
- Do some research on the relevant expertise/background of each referee and have his/her letter to support that same specific part of your research. This way you will have less difficulty in getting people to sign the letters drafted by you (as they understand what you are writing). With each letter supporting one or two items/points, together they present a comprehensive big picture of your strong capability/background. You may have one comprehensive letter (say, the one by your boss) that talks about everything of your research. But an immigration officer may feel that his time gets wasted if all the letters have the same contents (just my own opinion).
- avoid letters that are too long (in general, 2-3 pages is enough); long letters could be annoying to the officers who only have 10-15 minutes on each case;
- if you are not satisfied with a letter, the do not use it – use only those that can make a unique contribution to your case;
One other tip: If you do not have many publications (like me), include in your resume your MS and PhD theses as peer-reviewed publications, for in some sense they were reviewed by your thesis committee members too.
The above is only my own opinion. Hope you find it helpful. Best luck to you all!