Why an RFE Comes: Causes and Statistics

What an RFE is and the response deadlines are explained in the RFE overview. How to prepare a response is covered in how to respond to an RFE.

Why an RFE Is Issued: Three Main Reasons

When you break down denial texts by criteria, almost every officer's concern fits into three groups.

1. Plain language criteria not met. This is the most common group. The regulation describes each criterion literally, and the officer checks each element: not "did you have achievements," but "is it shown that you received an award, that it's nationally recognized, and that it relates to your field." If even one element lacks documentary proof, the entire criterion is not credited.

2. Formal defects in evidence. Missing certified translation. Missing author, date, or publication title. Screenshot without a URL. Link instead of a copy of the material. A link that leads to a 404: the officer opens it, sees an error, and notes that the evidence is absent from the record. A single translator's certificate used for a batch of unrelated documents. These issues are not about your career, but they can discredit a criterion just as firmly as a substantive flaw.

3. Everything is documented, but the level is lacking. The criteria are met, but at the second step, the officer does not see sustained recognition. This can also be a basis for the request, but it's addressed not through new documents, but by restructuring your argumentation.

Another distinct signal here is when almost all achievements are dated within the past year. Recognition described as "sustained" is accumulated over time, so a dense cluster of awards, publications, and letters from a recent period makes the officer suspect the case was built specifically for filing, rather than as part of a genuine career.

A separate, EB-2 NIW-specific reason: the applicant shows he or she is a strong professional, but does not clearly explain what exactly they plan to do in the US and the significance of this project for the country as a whole.

Which Criteria Most Often Fail

You can measure this. Our database has 1,242 Administrative Appeals Office (AAO) decisions on EB-1A, annotated by each criterion: claimed and credited, claimed and not credited, not claimed. Below is the share of "not credited" among cases where the criterion was claimed at all.

Separately, we analyzed a set of denial texts for 60 typical objections across nine criteria. The distribution is similar: most reviews involved original contribution (108), leading role (98), media coverage (94), and membership (94), while the fewest were about exhibitions (17).

The practical takeaway from both sets of numbers is this: membership, awards, and original contribution are the most vulnerable points, while judging and scholarly articles are the most resilient. If your case relies on three criteria and all three are from the top half of the table, the risk of an RFE is higher than if the same number includes judging and publications among your main three.

What officers write most often

RFE language tends to repeat from case to case. Below are real excerpts from requests sent to community members, one for each of the most problematic criteria.

For membership, the officer reviews the association's bylaws, not your profile:

"Being 'selective' or 'merit-based' is not the requirement for this criterion. Evidence must demonstrate that the association requires outstanding achievement as an essential condition for admission to membership."

For awards, the focus is on the recognition of the award itself, not the status of the organization giving it:

"This criterion requires that the award be nationally or internationally recognized for excellence, not that it is awarded by an organization that is national or international. The overall prestige of a given association cannot satisfy this criterion - the key issue is recognition of the award itself."

For original contribution, the main question is whether the impact went beyond the employer:

"While the evidence demonstrates that the business-related contribution has impacted the business, which may have led to the success of the business, the evidence does not establish that the business-related contribution went beyond the business and the business' clients and impacted or been of major significance to the field as a whole."

For media coverage, officers distinguish between materials about your work and materials about you personally:

"The submitted articles were primarily about your work. The articles mention your name or include your opinion, but published material must not simply be about your work, but about you - though it may not be unrelated to your work."

Comparing a high salary to the market average simply does not work:

"Average salary statistics do not provide the necessary range needed to show that a salary is high 'in relation to others in the field.'"

As for judging, USCIS does not count duties that are just part of the regular job description:

"USCIS does not consider the occupation of teaching or training others to be analogous to the formal designation as a 'judge' of the work of others."

How it looks from the applicant's side when issues are raised on every point at once:

did not prove that the organizations had the required reputation, you only provided letters but more documents are needed, did not provide the company structure and your role in it, you made an impact within company projects but not on the company itself

A full analysis of all 60 typical objections with ready-made templates ("what the officer wrote - how to address it") is collected in the RFE Response Builder.

Where cases most often fall apart in your field

Weak points differ from one profession to another. The same 1242 AAO decisions show that some fields usually lose on awards, while others lose on original contribution. Only combinations where the criterion was claimed at least 25 times are shown below.

Awards are the universal weak spot in almost every field. Original contribution is especially challenging for sports and IT: in those fields it is easy to describe an achievement, but hard to prove it changed practice beyond a club or company. The same caveat as above applies here: these are appeal decisions, not a representative sample of all petitions filed.

How often you get an RFE: official stats and community observations

It is important not to mix two different data sources, so they are shown separately below.

USCIS data on O-1, from October 2016 to September 2023. This is the only one of the three categories in the article with official statistics:

Two things follow from this. An RFE is a routine scenario, not a disaster: it is issued for roughly every fourth O-1 petition, and most who respond get approved. Immediate denial without an RFE is rare: almost always the officer asks first instead of closing the case without warning.

Community observations, broken down into three categories. We do not have official statistics for EB-1A and EB-2 NIW, so below are benchmarks based on discussions of real cases from our corpus:

These are small samples of stories, not USCIS statistics. The community tends to share and remember both memorable denials and high-profile approvals. Use these figures as an order of magnitude, not as a standard, and do not compare them directly to the official table above. Their nature and periods are different.

What holds true in both sources: the likelihood of a request goes up when the supporting evidence is thin. Cases with many satisfied criteria and thorough documentation rarely get an RFE. Borderline cases with just three criteria and weak evidence get them frequently.

Why Strong Cases Still Get RFE

Fulfilling three criteria is no longer the finish line. The review is two-stage: first, formal compliance with the criteria, then a final assessment of all the evidence taken together.

"Objectively meeting the regulatory criteria in the first step alone does not establish that the person in fact meets the requirements for classification as a person with extraordinary ability."

The community sees this as a shift that occurred at the end of 2024:

Proving three criteria to the officer hasn't been a problem for quite some time, but crossing the threshold of sustainable recognition and proving you're at the very top of your field is now, since the end of 2024, much harder work. In our chat in 2025, there were 5 cases where seven or more criteria were accepted, but the person got a denial, RFE, or NOID.

So the takeaway for preparation: a petition built as a checklist of three boxes is vulnerable even with decent evidence. What has changed in the review standards is covered in new standards for reviewing cases. If the officer has already moved to the second stage and is leaning toward denial, you get a NOID instead of an RFE.

Does Premium Processing Affect RFE Probability

A common concern: with expedited review, the officer allegedly doesn't have enough time and sends a request just in case. There is no supporting evidence for this. Expedited processing only changes the review timeline, not the legal standard. Requests and denials can happen with any type of review. There is no reliable rule that premium processing by itself makes the result worse.

The opposite is also not true: premium does not reduce RFE risk. It doesn't strengthen your case, it just brings a decision faster, which can include a request coming faster.

Technical requests can be caught ahead of time. Check your set of forms with the forms you need tool and check the completeness of your package in the packet preparation and review section.

Conclusions

1. The reason for an RFE is almost never the lack of achievements, but rather that they are not sufficiently proven-elements of the criterion are not met, there is no independent confirmation, or no certified translation.
2. Based on 1242 AAO decisions, the most vulnerable criteria are membership (not counted in 88.3% of cases where it was claimed), original contribution (83.6%), and awards (80.9%).
3. The most solid are authorship of scholarly articles (23.9%) and judging (25.5%). Cases where these two criteria are among your top three are usually stronger.
4. Weak points depend on the field: in sports and IT, original contribution tends to be a problem, while awards are an issue almost everywhere.
5. According to official USCIS data from October 2016 to September 2023, about 75% of O-1 petitions were approved right away, about 24.5% received an RFE, about 92.5% were ultimately approved, and only about 0.23% were denied without an RFE.
6. Community observations offer a different perspective and period: about 29% of EB-1A cases and about 30% of EB-2 NIW cases receive an RFE, about 20% for O-1. These numbers are reference points, not statistics.
7. You can have as many as seven criteria met: a denial or RFE is issued at the second stage, where they assess the strength of recognition. A separate red flag is when all achievements are dated within the last year.
8. Premium processing does not increase or decrease the risk of getting an RFE; it only affects the response time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Materials

Related materials - Wait for the decision

• How to track your case after filing an O-1/EB-1 petition
• RFE: What Is a Request for Evidence
• RFE response: how to answer USCIS step by step
• How to format evidence so USCIS counts it: real RFEs
• NOID: how to respond to a Notice of Intent to Deny
• What Happens After EB-1 / EB-2 Petition Approval
• How to Read the Visa Bulletin for EB-1 and EB-2
• Priority Date: How to Find It and What It Means
• Final Action Dates and Dates for Filing
• The standards that trigger an RFE
• How the evidence was gathered
• Mandamus and Congress: what really works in case of delay
• USCIS uses AI: Claude, ELIS, ATLAS, and FOIA requests

All articles in «Wait for the decision»

Next stepEB-1A appeals databaseLearn from 3,000+ real AAO decisions.

From community discussions

• «For the EB it's all the same as for the O-1, but with increased weight. For developers you need major projects where you were indispensable and can prove it; work at very large and well-known companies; talks at specialized conferences; judging at IT contests; several interviews about you in media at the RBC level; recommendation letters from weighty figures; a job offer in the US.»

  Sergey · from public community chats

• «The consul works by clear rules. His task is to prove to himself that you're an immigrant, and your task is the opposite: who beats whom. You either play this game by the rules or you don't. After all, it's you who needs the US, not the consul.»

  Ruslan · from public community chats

• «I'm not arguing here that he apparently checked it poorly, but when you buy a package service and not just a lawyer, you expect more. And why was he told to go for EB-2 NIW when he already came with a pretty good package for EB-1 (over 20 years working as a research scientist with a bunch of patents, awards) - he only needed to add media.»

  Kate · from public community chats

Personal opinions of community members from public discussions, not legal advice.

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