How I Secured my I140 Approval under EB2NIW through DIY (no laywers involved at any point) with only Masters and Several Years Experience, no PhD, no papers at all - Part 4

In the final month, there will be a lot of tedious administrative work, but this is also the time to pay attention to crucial details. First, organize all your supporting documents according to the order they appear in your petition letter (PL), or group them by category into appendices. Make sure that all references in the PL to appendices (e.g., Appendix 1, 2, 3, to N) are correctly matched. It’s highly likely that during the writing process, you may have added sections, causing the numbering to become misaligned.

After printing out all the documents, read through the PL along with the corresponding supporting documents. Printing everything out has two benefits. First, in my experience, it’s easier to remember the context when reading on paper than on a screen, and inconsistencies are easier to spot. Second, you can spread all the pages out on a large table to check the details in sequence. Each time, focus on one to three items, as our short-term memory is limited. A good example of this is when you try to remember a phone number—you’ll often forget everything except the area code after 30 seconds. This is a little trick I learned from a colleague who was an ex-Credit Suisse banker, during my first job over eight years ago, and I’ve applied it ever since in both work and life. Ensuring the accuracy of your information gives you peace of mind.

Finally, don’t forget to sign the forms. After mailing mine, I was still worried about whether I had remembered to sign everything, but it turned out that I hadn’t missed anything—I had signed them right before packing them in the box.

If you would like, access my Petition Letter and Recommendation Letters here.