Hello! I am planning to submit a self-petition for NIW green card and trying to connect to someone who recently applied or got their NIW approved. I tried sending Sajha message to some folks who commented in older NIW threads but didn't get any response. Hopefully someone who recently got NIW approval or is going through the application process sees this. I'd greatly appreciate any experience, suggestions, tips, example application materials, etc you might be willing to share. Thanks a lot!

ask the qstn; will try to help

I would just use a lawyer. It's worth it if you consider investment vs return. Many of them give money back guarantee, if your case is good enough.

I can help you with your questions

Ask, I (we) will try to do our best. Still, my ultimate suggestion will be to hire a good lawyer, you won't regret.

Thanks to all for responding.
Here are some questions I have at the moment:

Other people might comment on details point by point but here is my 2 cents:

I applied through a lawyer (wegreened.com). NIW is a long process to get everything ready. One of the main thing that I learned in this process is how to present your case. I have read people who had over hundreds of citation and did self petition and got rejected. The main reason being they couldn't put a convincing case to the USCIS officer. Recommendation letters are very important for this purpose. The letters are not like regular letter. It has to be written in a way so that USCIS can't point a finger. This is done by avoiding any vague words (such as, may, shall etc).

Just think about the letters and cover letters as a legal document, for example, you are lawyer and you are presenting a case to the judge. We have all seen from the news that what a good lawyers can do.

Most of the lawyers write the letters and cover letter. Like with wegreed.com, you have to provide a summary of contribution and based on that, they draft the letters and you can revise as many times as you want until you are satisfied. The letters has to be written in such a way that layman can understand. And also having a versatile list of recommenders help.

Bakwaas_kura ji, I read 8+ successful application packets of my friends, but I still recommend wegreened.com (or find others who refund your money if your case is not approved). Every case is different and it is possible to get a scary RFE even if you have almost an EB1 case. I hope $5K is manageable. Good luck!

Thank you nepali786 and - for your input; I will definitely give a serious consideration to hiring a lawyer. Hopefully some self-petitioners will also share their experiences here meanwhile.

I did consult (the free eval.) with wegreened.com folks - they were very responsive and recommended applying right now even though I'm few months away from getting my PhD.
Has anyone heard of or dealt with Taylor & Associates Law, PC? They are advertising "approval or no fee" for $2900 - one of the cheapest rates I've seen.

I am also still a graduate student and graduating in may. I conctated chen and others last june and all the lawyers suggested i have good chance of approval and went ahead. I have heard of taylor, they might not have updated their fees on website so do double check with them. But if you happen to go with lawyers, Chen is the way to go and actually their fees are also consistent with many other lawyers. They file more than 2K NIW in a year with >99.6 approval rate. Did they give you the approved/refund ?

And also USCIS keeps changing the way they adjudicate cases very often. So, talking to someone who got NIW approved 2-3 years ago might not be very relevant. (Matter of Dhanasar was applied in Dec 2017). But even without that, it looks like USCIS keeps changing the way they evaluate cases (according to my lawyers)

I was a little concerned about applying before graduation. But hearing about your case being approved is quite reassuring.
Yes, they offered me the "approved or full refund, including the I-140 fee" deal. How long did it take you/them to get the application ready and submitted after you signed contract with them? Were they easy to work with? What about your I-485? Concurrent or you applied later?

Timeline: Signed Contract in first week of July.
My petition letter and everything was ready by first week of November. But I had to wait until dec to get my masters degree to file. So, it was filed in last week of December.

After you sign the contract, if you can give them what they need, I would say it can be filed in 2 months.

They are very easy to work. They always respond within 24 hours. They have online file and managing system, where they upload all the documents and communication is also done from it.

I filed 485 a month later in first week of feb while my I-140 is pending.

Thanks for the info. So, your I-140 is still pending or did you type "is" instead of "was" by mistake? Any RFEs in your case?

Yes it is pending. I am hoping to hear back before May. USCIS processing is never done in order the case is received so I am just keeping fingers crossed everyday, since it might be any day...

Nepali786: My case was also received on Dec, 2018 (Texas service center). You mentioned that your are expecting the decision should be made by May, did you submit to Nebraska service center ? If it is Texas, It may take somewhere between 7.5 to 9.5 months (processing is too slow in Texas compared to Nebraska). Or it does not work this way and we can still hope that the decision can be made way earlier than 7.5 months ?

@iphone6: TSC is actually faster than NSC, based on USCIS website as well as forum discussions. But, there's really no "average" time to process these applications - can vary from as little as a month to over a year - depends on a lot of things including country of birth, service center where the application went to, application itself, and the officer handling the case. Good thing for us is that there is no backlog of NIW applicants like in the case of Indian and Chinese applicants. So things should move relatively faster than the "average", but again - all those things I mentioned can affect your case.
If you don't mind, do you mind sharing some details about your application? self/lawyer petition, only I-140 or concurrent I-485, etc? Thx!

Yes, TSC has been faster than NSC for the past several months but it wasn't like that 1 year ago. It looks like they keep shifting the loads back and forth. And average time is 5-7 months but there are always exceptions and I have seen cases approved in 2 months or less. In fact, 2-3 months ago, I saw one NIW approved in 3 weeks from TSC.