Hi,

Best wishes to all of you who have applied or considering to apply for EB2-NIW.

Let me tell my story. I applied for EB2-NIW in Sept. 2007 while I was still in F1 as PhD student through a reputed lawyer. I got RFE notice around 1st week of Dec, 2009. Again resubmitted RFE documents but got denial notice just in about 2 weeks.

Ok, about my credentials

1) 6 published papers in referred journals (2 first and other second auhor)

2) 10 conference proceedings (7 first author rest 2nd)

3) Got some reputed awards from scientific societies in my field

4) # of citations 2 (the paper was published just few months ago so citations was low)

5) 7 Recommendation letters, 2 of those from scientists from National Labs

The main reason of denial was the low number of citations. So from my experience, if you have good journal publications like in Science and Nature and have good number of citations to demonstrate the importance of your work then the chances are high, otherwise, it depends on your luck !

Now I am in H1B and planning to try again after few months. I will keep updated.

Thanks