Personal statement vs cover letter?

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gc_app07

Registered Users (C)
I am planning to apply in the EB1 OR category and was wondering if a personal statement is required. The university's attorney will write the cover letter but I wasn't sure if a personal statement is needed.

I assume the cover letter will discuss in detail the two criteria I fulfill, provide quotes from reference letters, mention the awards/travel grants, provide citation index, etc. Thus if I provide a personal statement, what should the emphasis be (and long should the letter be)?

Thank you very much.
 
You may want to provide a letter to the university attorney describing your field in layman's terms and importance of your work in the field. Probably, she/he will also require your resume etc. to complete the application. Your letter will serve as a guideline for the attorney when compiling the cover letter. Other than that, self-claims in these petition has zero weight as far as I see so far. I am putting application for EB1-OR as well hope to send it within few weeks.
 
Do a solid job of writing the cover letter-that can make all the difference. IOs have 15 or less minutes to read your application and having a nice and thorough cover letter makes it easier for them to make a decision. Most often they arrive at decision just from the cover letter and rarely look at supporting documents. This is from my attorney who actaully saw the process first hand of adjudication couple of years back.

Most of my time for my EB1B application (2006) was spent on compiling cover letter which probably was like 8-10 pages long with consistent high quality on every page. While your lawyer can certainly lay it out for you, you'll still be the one responsible for providing material etc. Be patient and read it again and again. Have others read it for you to point out mistakes or provide opinion for improvement. Good luck!!
 
Thanks blueone and sunmicro for your responses.

sunmicro: It seems from your response that you did not provide a personal statement but all the relevant information was part of the cover letter. Can you please verify this?
 
Just the cover letter. It was signed by Chief Scientific Officer at my company. This makes a better impact if somone else talks about you rather than a personal statement.
 
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