Introducing Ascent Club: The EB1A, O-1A, and EB2-NIW Community You’ve Been Missing

If you’ve had experience in putting together furniture with instructions that were written in three languages you don’t speak, and these instructions were likely to have been translated by a person who has never seen the product, you would know what it feels like to be building an EB1A case on your own. You may have all parts of the puzzle in place: your documents, your citations, your letters of recommendation; however, you don’t have any pictures on the box. Every thread on the forum may seem like a description of a different piece of furniture altogether from yours. That is precisely the reason why the EB1A community is so important, not because it cheers you on, but because among these people there is someone who knows how to find a missing screw. Ascent Club is that place.

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The Problem With Figuring This Out Alone

The moment you search for “EB1A,” you are bound to expose a group of disparate opinions but little consensus. One Reddit note proposes that a field expert has to be consulted in every case while another one believes that consulting might not be necessary if the citations are strong enough. Someone on Blind noted that an RFE means that a denial is coming, while another commenter thinks that it’s just the way it is. However, people base their opinions on their particular case and field, as well as on their attorney’s judgment, but they never state the reasons for their beliefs.

Consequently, this leads to a certain level of information overload that surpasses not possessing any information at all. You find yourself with a collection of conflicting screenshots without any clear way of knowing which advice pertains to the situation. An engineer’s technique does not lend well to that of a researcher; the same goes for the equipment manufacturer; moreover, the current forum simplifies everything into one thread which means that you are unable to determine which elements of someone else’s experience are actually important for you.

As a result, this has caused a certain amount of information overload, which is worse than not having any information. You have a bunch of screenshots that contradict each other, while you cannot figure out which advice is relevant for you. What works for an engineer does not work in research; the same is true for equipment manufacturers; in addition to this, the current forum has made it possible to find everything in one thread which does not give you an opportunity to understand what is important for you from other people’s experience.

What Is Ascent Club?

Ascent Club is not just another service added to your application – it is a community. The team behind EB1A Experts (the same team that worked on over 300 successful EB1A applications) created Ascent Club, but it is not a sales tool pretending to be a forum. Instead, it is a place for people who are applying for extraordinary ability or self-sponsorship green card to talk to each other, ask questions they would never dare to ask their attorneys, and learn from the experience of others.

Ascent Club can be seen as an ongoing support group for EB1A applicants but it provides more targeted support (i.e. it is made up of people who know what Kazarian means rather than random encouraging individuals). The support provided by Ascent Club does not replace other services offered by the firm but is complementary.

Who It’s For

Ascent Club is not restricted to those who have retained lawyers but relates to anyone applying for the visa. Some of the members are new to the process; they may have heard terms like EB1A and O-1A before, but they are still trying to figure out what it means to them. Others will be right in the middle of unemployment verification and statement writing, waiting for their RFE response, or making choices about pursuing EB1A or EB2-NIW. Still others are people who have already been approved and joined the community, for they like answering questions because they received help from other members, too.

This diversity is important because the community is well-versed in self-petitioning and is available for people at all stages of their journey, and there is really no great waiting room to sit in until approval is received. There are also people who are just starting to learn about O-1A and decide on the worthiness of this option, or have their own reasons to be in touch with the EB2-NIW people even before they make any moves in their case.

What You’ll Find Inside

The community is built on a few activities that truly bring the desired outcomes for those working on their cases at home.

• Say Hi is the first post everybody makes — it is a simple thread where newcomers tell about their industries, stages, and challenges they have. While it does seem unimportant, it is often the first realization that one is not alone with his or her troubles.
• Wall of Wins is a section where you can see all the successes people have had — approvals, responses to RFE, cases that finally progressed. This is not mere entertainment. To read about how someone else’s case got through all the obstacles is usually much more beneficial than to study another general list of what to do.
• Members have direct communication with Raghu and the legal team without the need for a ticketing system. They are able to communicate directly within the same email threads that the entire community is reading. Questions are answered by actual people who have processed extraordinary ability visa cases and not via a widely available FAQ bot.
• If someone wants to do part of the work for themselves, this is also a perfect time to do so thanks to LevelUp, a self-service tool used in order to create a solid profile. This option is helpful for people who are not ready to enter into a full-service contract yet or simply would like to better prepare themselves for such an engagement. Ascent Club is also an extraordinary ability visa community where LevelUp is one of the options and not the only option available to its members.

Why Community Actually Matters Here

One of the aspects of isolation that makes immigration cases harder is the magnitude of uncertainty, which increases due to the absence of others with whom to compare it. Approval of others is not simply comforting; it offers justification for the proposed path, which is very important even if many don’t realize it when you are nearing the end of three months of applying and still don’t see any results.

The exact reverse can be true as well. The question you are struggling with, puzzled whether it is too basic to ask, might be very well the same question answered by someone one week ago. It could be about the number of recommendation letters that are enough or whether a particular publication is considered as “major media” according to some evaluation criteria. When you are thinking about such issues at midnight, far away from deadline, you realize that such a minor question can become an enormous challenge for you alone. An immigration self-service resource helps you, providing different tools and templates. However, it is impossible to compare the situation with applying for a visa because there is no chance to share the fear together with people with same experience.

How to Join

There is no requirement that you file a petition, hire an attorney, or compile an evidence portfolio. The only thing you need to be is somewhere — however vaguely — along the path of acquiring EB1A status. The people who will answer your question are the same ones who at one time had theirs too.