EB-1A Approval Rates: What the Data Actually Shows

USCIS publishes I-140 adjudication data annually by preference category. For EB-1A — the extraordinary ability immigrant petition — the headline number looks encouraging. But the headline number isn't the one that matters most for predicting your outcome.

The overall approval rate

Across FY2022–2024, EB-1A I-140 petitions were approved at roughly 70–75% overall. FY2022 came in around 72%; FY2023 dropped slightly to about 70%, likely reflecting a tighter adjudication posture after pandemic-era processing backlogs cleared; FY2024 recovered to around 74%.

That's a meaningful baseline. For comparison, EB-2 NIW approvals ran 5–10 points lower over the same period. EB-1A has historically been harder to qualify for but easier to get approved once filed — because the people who file it tend to have done some selection upfront.

The RFE rate is what you should actually care about

About 30–36% of EB-1A petitions received a Request for Evidence in recent fiscal years. That's not a denial — it's a formal request for additional documentation or clarification before a decision is made. The key thing: most RFE responses still result in approval. USCIS data suggests that well-responded RFEs clear at 60–70%.

What this means practically: the RFE is not the end of the road. It's expensive and time-consuming, and it delays your case by months. But if your underlying evidence is solid, an RFE is survivable. The risk is letting an RFE catch you off guard with weak documentation.

RFEs tend to cluster around specific patterns. Petitioners who meet the criterion count on paper but have thin supporting evidence — a few publications, no citation record, recommendation letters that read as generic praise — are the most likely to receive them. USCIS isn't just counting; they're evaluating significance.

Where denials actually come from

Most denials are not on technical grounds — a missing form, a wrong fee. They're on "totality" grounds. This matters because it means the officer agreed you met some criteria but didn't find the overall record convincing that you belong in the narrow class of people with extraordinary ability.

USCIS adopted the "totality of the evidence" standard following the 2010 Kazarian ruling. Even if you check three boxes, the officer can still deny if the overall impression is that you're a solid professional rather than someone at the very top. This is the part that confuses most self-petitioners. Meeting the criterion count is necessary but not sufficient.

The other denial pattern is narrow field definitions. Someone who is clearly elite within a sub-specialty — say, a specific machine learning architecture — but whose field definition is written too narrowly may get denied because the "top of the field" the officer is evaluating is almost empty. Write the field broadly enough that the extraordinary achievement is meaningful.

Attorney-filed vs. self-petitioned

USCIS doesn't publish approval rates broken down by whether an attorney filed the petition. But the practitioner community has observed a consistent pattern: attorney-filed petitions tend to have lower RFE rates. The main reason isn't that attorneys have magical influence — it's that they've done this enough times to know what a thin cover letter looks like, and they push back on clients who want to submit marginal evidence.

Self-filed petitions are legal and increasingly common among senior tech workers and researchers who understand their own evidence well. But the self-filed denial patterns tend to reflect presentation problems rather than underlying qualification gaps. The evidence existed; it wasn't framed compellingly.

Concurrent filing and approval dynamics

Concurrent filing — submitting I-485 (adjustment of status) alongside I-140 when a visa number is immediately available — doesn't affect I-140 approval rates directly. But it changes the stakes. An I-140 denial when I-485 is pending triggers more immediate consequences than a standalone I-140 denial where you can refile.

For EB-1A, visa numbers are currently available for all countries. That means most EB-1A petitioners can file concurrently if they choose. The practical effect on the approval rate discussion: concurrent filers tend to prepare more thoroughly because the consequences of a denial are more immediate. Selection effect again.

What 70%+ approval actually means for you

If you have solid documentation across three or more criteria — not just checkbox-level, but evidence that holds up to scrutiny — the base rate is in your favor. More than two in three petitions with that profile get approved on the first filing.

The failure mode is misreading the base rate as permission to file a weak petition. The 25–30% denial rate isn't random noise — it tracks directly to insufficient evidence, poor cover letter construction, or the totality problem. Fix those, and you're in the 70%+ bucket. Ignore them, and the base rate doesn't help you.

The honest question to ask before filing isn't "do I meet three criteria?" — it's "can I document three criteria in a way that an officer who reads hundreds of these finds compelling?" That's a harder question, and the answer shapes your actual odds more than the aggregate approval rate does.