About award preparation

M

moseszhu

Registered Users (C)
Dear Buddies,

Could I ask for your experience about award/fellowship/Scholarship preparation for EB1a/NIW?

1. I have one award from a conference held by an academic society, but there is no official description about its criteria from the society. However, I asked one of the conference organizer to write a letter and in this letter, he stated the criteria. Do you think this is enough. Would USCIS ask for more official description from the NYAS?

2. Several other fellowship/scholarship from PhD or BS also have the same problem. I cannot find the official criteria but only describe them in one letter. Do you think this will result in any trouble(RFE or even denial?)

Thank you very much for your response.
 
Ohm...tough questions.
I am also preparing the file, no experience. My thoughts: the key word for the awards is "nationally or internationally recognized". We need to prove that the pool of the award is not local, at least nation wide, better international. Based on this:
1. Your award from the conference may count, a letter from the organizer is crucial, especially he/she should emphasize the applicants are international or national etc.

2. For the other fellowships/scholarships for PhD or BS, you might need to be careful. As long as the competition is at least nation wide, you could mention them. However, I read from another forum, NSC rejected the awards claim saying the awards were for students thus not counted.

Don't want to scare you, I myself have a fellowship for postdoc that I want to claim. I think I heard from somewhere saying the fellowships count (again national one), but the NSC is really tough.
 
Thank you llp1 for your response.

I wish my conference award would work.

Actually, one major concern is the description of student awards, especially those during BS, would have even worse effect than not saying. Another concern is I have no official description of the criteria, referee says the criteria. Besides awards receipt/certificate, do you always have background/criteria description printed out from website?

Thank you and good luck.


llp1 said:
Ohm...tough questions.
I am also preparing the file, no experience. My thoughts: the key word for the awards is "nationally or internationally recognized". We need to prove that the pool of the award is not local, at least nation wide, better international. Based on this:
1. Your award from the conference may count, a letter from the organizer is crucial, especially he/she should emphasize the applicants are international or national etc.

2. For the other fellowships/scholarships for PhD or BS, you might need to be careful. As long as the competition is at least nation wide, you could mention them. However, I read from another forum, NSC rejected the awards claim saying the awards were for students thus not counted.

Don't want to scare you, I myself have a fellowship for postdoc that I want to claim. I think I heard from somewhere saying the fellowships count (again national one), but the NSC is really tough.
Click to expand...
 
Take a look at the appeals decisions posted on the USCIS website-- you can get a good idea of what specific type of evidence they are looking for with regard to awards. This, combined with some of the recent RFEs posted here where there seems to be a trend of wanting more objective evidence about the awards, probably means that an award where the eligible pool is limited to students will not work.

The USCIS argument is that if the eligible pool for the award is limited to students (regardless of geography), you are by definition excluding the leaders in the field from applying. This would of course apply to any undergrad award.

Good luck!
 
Thank you very much, WaryOR. You made a good suggestion and I will go to the USCIS website.

Good luck to you too.


WaryOR said:
Take a look at the appeals decisions posted on the USCIS website-- you can get a good idea of what specific type of evidence they are looking for with regard to awards. This, combined with some of the recent RFEs posted here where there seems to be a trend of wanting more objective evidence about the awards, probably means that an award where the eligible pool is limited to students will not work.

The USCIS argument is that if the eligible pool for the award is limited to students (regardless of geography), you are by definition excluding the leaders in the field from applying. This would of course apply to any undergrad award.

Good luck!
Click to expand...
 
Really?
"The USCIS argument is that if the eligible pool for the award is limited to students (regardless of geography), you are by definition excluding the leaders in the field from applying. This would of course apply to any undergrad award."

That's too much if that's their real reason. The words, "nationally or internationally recognized", don't seem to imply that specifically.

That's really tough.
 
Here is the boilerplate wordage that shows up in several of the publicly posted appeals decisions:

"Academic study is not a field of endeavor, but training for a future field of endeavor. As such, academic scholarships, including stipends, or student awards can not be considered prizes or awards in the academics field of endeavor. Moreover, competition for scholarships is limited to students. Experienced experts in the field are not seeking scholarships"

I am along with everyone here in hoping for the best... but I have to agree with the CIS on this point-- would your senior mentors, and those folks whom we want reference letters from, be including undergrad awards on their CVs? If you are relying on an undergrad award to qualify as an extraordinary ability, then the case is probably in trouble. Just my .02 :)
 
Good point, WaryOR. Thanks!
Now I worry more. As before I believed that the fellowships for postdocs were counted, like the Fullbright and Holbult (sorry, forget the spelling) fellowships that support people to do research at prestigious places. Mine is the similar but from Canada, which supports graduates from PhDs to do research with top level groups abroad or domestic.
Do you think they count that?
 
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