I’m a bit confused about the statistics for EB-1A. I understand there are two stages — first the petition approval, then the green card. For the first stage, what’s the approval rate? And which EB-1 criteria does USCIS actually credit in practice during adjudication — are there up-to-date figures?
According to USCIS reports, approvals are about 50% for EB-1 and 94% for O-1, but it’s incorrect to compare them head-to-head. Far fewer people apply for EB-1 — out of 100 people in a given field, 70–80 go with O-1, and only 1–2, at most 3, with EB-1. The screening happens even before filing: those who pursue EB-1 already understand the case is very strong, so the bar is set high from the start.
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Oh, got it about the pre-filing filter — so the real percentage for strong cases is probably higher than that 50%. Where did you find those approval figures, in USCIS reports directly?
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Regarding the RFE — I saw a figure of about 35% for EB-1A from older discussions on immigration forums. Whether that’s still accurate now — honestly, I don’t know; I haven’t come across any newer data. One more nuance they didn’t mention: if you already have an approved O-1A and have spent enough time living in the US, that is actually taken into account when an EB-1A petition is reviewed, not just treated as background.
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USCIS’s annual reports on their website include I-140 data — search by form and category; they have breakdowns of approvals and denials. There are no official RFE statistics at all, only forum-based observations. Regarding the current administration — I’ve heard that the standards for “extraordinary ability” have been enforced more strictly lately, but that’s not based on numbers; it’s just a feeling from the cases people discuss.
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I wouldn’t recommend relying solely on the overall approval rate. In EB-1A, what matters more than statistics is the specific case: the petition’s structure, the quality of the evidence, and the logic connecting the applicant’s achievements to their professional field.
A strong petition is built not on the number of documents but on how convincingly they demonstrate the criteria and the applicant’s ultimate significance.
In approval practice, the criteria related to serving as a judge and to scholarly publications most often work well.
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