Most NIW advice online is written for researchers with a PhD and a shelf of publications. If you're a professional — in finance, engineering, business, or another non-research field — most of that guidance doesn't apply to you. Here are the key tips...

Just exploring the logic behind this issue, and why I wouldn't do it. If there's an attorney client relationship, opinions vary and it's entirely tied to personal experience. But at least under that relationship, the lawyer's legal responsibility an...

When I was writing my own PL, the part I spent the most effort on was actually Prong 1. That section was the longest and the most mentally draining. But if you ask me what NIW is really about, I'd say the real key is Prong 3. NIW at its core comes d...

The NIW Policy Manual is written in very executive style language. It lays out a framework—an abstract set of evaluative principles. Terms like “substantial merit,” “national importance,” “well positioned,” and “on balance beneficial”...

Credential Evaluation (Degree Equivalency) Recently, some people asked about credential evaluation for NIW, so I’ll walk through my experience getting my degrees evaluated for U.S. equivalency. My degrees are from the UK and Canada. While people oft...

The timeline looks long, but in reality I only worked on it on Sunday afternoons or evenings. During the week, I kept the three prongs in mind, constantly looking out for and collecting relevant material. Whenever I found something useful, I’d note ...

A lot of people have asked me: when you DIY your NIW, why didn’t you try to imitate how lawyers write? After all, they’ve handled so many cases—wouldn’t following their style be “safer”? But I intentionally chose to make my Petition Letter different...

Today I want to share a few personal stories about my wife, about myself, and about how we both learned not to be intimidated by the numbers. My wife graduated from a top 30 university in China and later earned her master’s degree in Canada. Recentl...

Suppose someone with almost the exact same background as mine — same school, same major, even a similar job — gets their NIW petition denied. The first thought that hits you is, “If they got rejected, do I even stand a chance?” That’s actually a ver...

Example of the high-level proposed endeavor summary: My proposed endeavor is to help U.S. energy companies raise capital. “Then what” — Round 1: How many years will this proposed endeavor continue? How many U.S. energy companies are we talking abou...

A lot of people have asked me: “When you DIY’d your NIW, why didn’t you just copy the way lawyers write? After all, they’ve handled so many cases, wouldn’t that be safer?” But for me, I deliberately chose to make my Petition Letter look and feel dif...

Now that earnings season is winding down, I was catching up with a few other finance folks on Friday, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my DIY NIW process felt exactly like the different functions I used to work in—or interac...

A lot of people feel overwhelmed when they think about preparing their own NIW case, like it’s going to be an uphill battle. But for me, it felt more like managing a brand-new project. Personally, I thrive on figuring things out and I actually enjoy...

I just revisited ARK’s Big Ideas 2025 deck — I think I first looked at it earlier this year — and flipping through it again, I realized how forward-looking many of the ideas are. I’ve always liked their presentation style: clean, intuitive charts th...

It’s earnings season again, and those of us working directly with the markets — especially in finance — are probably feeling the pressure. With back-to-back earnings calls, analysis updates, and financial models to run, it’s exhausting. Amid this ch...