jomia said:
Dear fellow GC applicants,
I have just received an RFE on my EB1-EA I-140 petition from NSC after I requested for the PP. I did the petition myself, and the RFE I got is a tough one. The director challenged every piece of evidence I submitted. I am very distressed by this and not exactly sure how to respond. I have typed entire text of the RFE below. I am not sure if anyboy got similar RFE as mine. Please read on. I am especially not sure how to respond to the award comment. The director doesn't think postdoctoral fellowship awards can be claimed as "Nationally acclaimed awards". I have two postdoctoral fellowship awards. If I am not considered as eligible for the "award" criteria, I will only be left with two criteria to fill in, significant contributions and publications. I may try for the memberships in association one, but the application for the associations is not very hard, so don't know if it can impress NSC. I will be very grateful to any comments or advice from my fellow GC applicants.
The RFE from CIS:
Extraordinary ability is defined as "a level of expertise indicating that the individual is one of that small percentage who have risen to the very top of the field of endeavor." You must submit additional evidence which clearly demonstrates that you have sustained national or international acclaim and that your achievements have been recognized as extraordinary by others in the field.
You have submitted evidence of your receipt of fellowships, postdoctoral fellow awards and a travel award. Such awards are not the type of award for hwich established scientists in your field would compete, and therefore cannot demonstrate your standing in the field as a whole. Please submit evidence of your receipt of nationally or internationally recognized awards for which you would have been competing against others in yoru field respective of their career stage.
You have submitted evidence that you belong to several associations in your field. Please submit documentary evidence of the requirements which must be met for membership in each of these associations.
You have submitted evidence that you have six published articles, one book chapter from 1998 through 2006, and several published abstracts of conference presentations. Please explain how this publication record demonstrates that you rank among the very top of your field of endeavor.
As evidence of your original scientific contributions, you submitted letters from others in your field. Many of these letters appear to be from individuals you have known through your schooling or work collaboration. IN addition, most of these letters appear to address your contributions as they would justify a waiver of the job offer in the national interest, but fall short of establishing that they have garnered you sustained national or international acclaim. You also submitted evidence that others have requested your bioinformatic computer program, which would indicate that others have noticed your work, but not that they have incorporated it into their own work or that it has been widely adopted in the field. Please submit additional evidence that would indicate that others in your field view your accomplishments as placing you in the small percentage at the top of your field. Evidence that those outside the alien's circle of colleagues and acquaintances consider the work important is especially valuable.
I will be grateful to any suggestions.
Thanks a lot.
First of all if you can give information on your credentials subimtted will help others to comment.
I am not discouraging, but it is really important now that you have to answer all or atleast some of their concerns, which purely depends on your achievements.
My suggestions are:
1. Get more independent letters, preferably drafted well, and highlighting your work and yourself one of the top in your area of research. Strong reference letters, with very suitable wordings, you can find it in this forum, very essential to convience NSC, they are the most notorious centers of USCIS. so be careful in dealing with them. They are good even in picking up word by word from your letters.
2. submit all citations, the papers has cited your work, highlight where it has been cited in the paper, if possible try to talk more about your journal papers , how top they are in your area of research.
3. Get more informatin form associations, and if you are student member ask them to upgrade to a full membership, talk to them and most people give a good letter with the criteria for membership. Go for the top class of membership always. Also try to get some statistics, like ---no of people applied and only ---got mmbership. Try to be member in at least 2-3 associations (exclude sigma xi).
4. Do not try to use post doc fellowship as awards, they never consider that, nothing below Nobel prize or similar to that- only 10 people in the world gets.
so try to avoid that one and stress on other criterias.
5. If you are a refreee for journals, get letters from editors and ask the editor to say few words that only extraordinary people in this field are selected for this journal as reviewer. try to say some points on the quality of the journal too.
6. Stress about the importance of your publications and impact all over the world, if possible your work importance and significance, for example,to human health and whether NIH or any govt organizations are supporting such projects.
I hope this will give you some idea and many of our colleagues can help you withadditional information.
Good luck.