A milestone is not a claim yet
One mistake I had to watch for in my EB-1A petition was treating milestones like arguments. "I was featured in Forbes."
Topic
drafting
A collection of 15 issues
My cover letter had to make the evidence easier to read
At first, I thought the EB-1A cover letter had to make me sound impressive. That was the wrong job.
The judging criterion needed more than a title
Judging sounds like one of the cleaner EB-1A criteria. You were invited to judge something.
The officer is not inside your industry
One mistake I had to watch for in my EB-1A petition was writing like the reader already understood my world. They did not.
The recommendation letters that helped me were specific, not glowing
When I first thought about EB-1A recommendation letters, I assumed the goal was praise. Strong praise.
Do not make the officer guess where a document came from
One of the quietest ways to weaken evidence is to strip it of its source. A screenshot with no URL is harder to trust.
Final merits is a closing argument, not a recap
By the time I reached the final merits section of my EB-1A petition, I was tired. The criteria sections had already done a lot of work.
Your resume explains chronology. Your petition explains eligibility.
A resume asks: What did you do, and when?
My exhibit list got better when I stopped treating it like storage
My final EB-1A petition had 40 exhibits. That number only tells half the story.
The first thing my EB-1A had to explain was my field
Before my EB-1A petition could explain why I was extraordinary, it had to explain what field I was extraordinary in. That sounds obvious. It was not obvious to me at the start.