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
Petition Strategy
A collection of 20 issues
I did not give all five criteria equal space
I filed my EB-1A petition with five criteria. That did not mean I had five equal drafting assignments.
Run a six-line audit before you use an award
An award can enter your draft as a name. Before it enters your petition, give it six lines.
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.
A list of cities only helps if it shows a pattern
Geographic spread can look impressive. London.
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.