A letter should trace what your work changed, not how good you are.
A letter earns weight by naming the endeavor and the downstream work it shaped — not by the prestige of the signer.
A recommendation letter earns weight by naming the specific proposed endeavor and articulating how the petitioner’s contribution affected later work in the field. Letters that laud skills in general terms are treated as non-probative — the reputation of the signer does not cure a letter that says nothing concrete about impact.
This is trained behavior, not an officer’s whim. The officer-training binder instructs, verbatim, that letters articulating a contribution and its impact on subsequent work “add value,” while letters that “simply use hyperbolic language do not add value, and are not considered to be probative evidence.” The stock dismissal in the record mirrors it — authors who “laud the Beneficiary’s skills but do not discuss the specific proposed endeavor.”
Brief each recommender to state a specific fact: what the petitioner did, and what later work built on it. A letter that could be swapped onto another person’s petition without changing a word is not doing its job.
“Get strong letters from big names.” The trained-to-pass standard is not the prestige of the signer; it is specificity about the endeavor and traceable downstream impact.
I am preparing an EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) petition and want you to review a draft against a finding from the public record of NIW decisions. THE FINDING: A letter should trace what your work changed, not how good you are. A letter earns weight by naming the endeavor and the downstream work it shaped — not by the prestige of the signer. YOUR TASK: Here is a draft recommendation letter. Check whether it names my specific endeavor and traces how my work affected later work. Flag every sentence that is general praise and propose the concrete fact that should replace it. RULES: Work only from what I paste — do not invent facts about me. Do not predict outcomes or estimate chances. Point to specific sentences and propose concrete rewrites. --- MY DRAFT --- [Paste your draft here]