EB-1A Judging Criterion: Panels, Reviews & Hackathons

The answer is not a straightforward yes or no, but the distinction becomes vital for AI engineers evaluating the EB-1A judging criterion when crafting an extraordinary ability case in 2026.

Here’s a scenario that plays out more often than it should. An engineer at a mid-sized AI company judges an internal hackathon, the kind that runs across three days, draws talented participants, and feels genuinely competitive. They log it as a judging experience. Six months later, they’re preparing an EB-1A petition and adding it to their list of evidence. USCIS sends them a Request for Evidence, and in it, USCIS questions whether this activity shows fieldwide recognition or is just part of an internal employment function.

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They thought they were doing one thing, but USCIS thought something else.

The difference between those activities that appear to meet the standard of being recognized and those activities that the agency recognizes as such constitutes the essence of one of the most misunderstood criteria for obtaining an extraordinary ability green card. Specifically, according to § 204.5(h)(3)(iv), one of the core EB-1A requirements, applicants for the EB-1A visa prove their eligibility by presenting evidence of “participation either individually or on a panel, as a judge of the work of others in the same or an allied field of specialization.” From the theoretical perspective, the above provision looks quite inclusive. However, in practice, Criterion 4 is always perceived as both most actionable and most overlooked out of all ten criteria.

Read More: Modern EB1A Profile Development in 2026: Publications, Patents, Media, and Judging That USCIS Accepts

The Case Hackathons Can Make, and the One They Can’t

They can make a real case. The question is which ones. When it comes to hackathon judging EB-1A applicants cite as evidence, the venue matters as much as the invitation.

A judge at a company-organized hackathon is, from USCIS’s perspective, an employee performing an extended work function. A judge at a competition organized by a credible outside organization (university, significant technology trade association, government-funded research organization) is a whole different ball game: a credible technical authority who was chosen because of his credibility by an organization with no vested interest in the process beyond the credibility of the authority.

This is exactly what the USCIS judging criterion is designed to test. However, according to those who frequently deal with Criterion 4 evidence, the selection itself is the evidence. It does not matter that much that you appeared in some credible events. The agency cares that a credible organization specifically chose you. It does not care primarily that you showed up.

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The following is the actual illustration of such evidence in the petition. An extremely poor exhibit – a participation certificate of a conference without any indication of how the jury was composed, the status of the conference itself, and importance of the outcomes to be assessed. This can be compared to the convincing exhibit: a letter from the organizer of some prominent hackathon, sponsored by a reputable company/university/association and confirming that the competition received 400 applications from professionals of 120 companies; that the jury members were selected among the pool of 80 nominees representing the domains of expertise, on the basis of proven expertise; less than 15% nominees were selected to become jurors; the total prize pool consisted of $300,000 and incubator places; and that your jury specifically evaluated AI applications in healthcare in accordance with your specialization.

Same five hours of your time. Different visa documents altogether, depending on whether you applied for the correct letter beforehand before leaving the building.

Student competitions and single-organization events without credible external reach rarely survive scrutiny. That’s not a judgment call. It’s a documented pattern across 2025 and 2026 adjudications.

Award Panels: The More Defensible Option

Formal award panels EB-1A applicants pursue are the cleaner path, and immigration practitioners are increasingly steering clients toward them.

Being a member of the selection committee for IEEE/ACM technical awards, reviewing nominations for best paper at ICML/CVPR, sitting on review panels for Forbes AI 50, or reviewing applications for a NSF-supported organization all have something in common: they are visible, verifiable outside of your institution, and are structured to evaluate merit. This will not be missed by USCIS adjudicators.

There is another potential benefit worth pointing out. Prestigious judging appointments are often accompanied by media coverage regardless – conference program committees receive mentions in the announcements of the event, editorial board memberships get a mention in industry journals, award panelists get publicity releases that mention their name and biographical details. One judging role, documented correctly, can work across two criteria simultaneously. That cross-criterion leverage is one of the more underappreciated strategic advantages of building a serious judging record.

Technical Reviews: Where Most Applicants Go Wrong

Peer review for established journals qualifies, and it’s one of the strongest forms of technical reviews EB-1A petitioners can lean on. Reviewing submissions for ICLR, ACL, CVPR, or AAAI qualifications. Serving on a conference technical committee (the kind that decides which papers are accepted at a flagship conference) qualifies. Grant reviews for NSF, NIH, DoE, or private foundations sit at the top of the strength hierarchy.

However, internal code reviews, architecture approvals, and technical design reviews within your organization do not fall into the category since they show organizational trust, but not the recognition of your authority to evaluate other people’s works across the field.

However, it does not rule out the use of internal judging. There are three examples of internal judging provided by practicing lawyers. A cyber-security specialist participated in evaluating the risk framework, which he did as an expert rather than as a member of management. His participation was documented with criteria and formal recommendations accepted by high management of the financial institution. An architect in one of the top consulting firms participated in evaluating technologies selected internally, which is documented with rubrics and formal documentation of the panels while at the same time evaluating external designs. A systems consultant evaluated vendor proposals in contracts costing billions of dollars using scoring sheets. His work as an expert judge is documented with internal logs. Judging was formal, based on criteria and was done by experts. One practitioner explained how to do it correctly: You just need to be sure that you perform it formally, using your expertise and documenting it.

The Pitfalls That Derail Otherwise Strong Cases

USCIS has become more attuned to weak EB-1A judging evidence, including categories that are actively growing in frequency.

Pay-to-play events: If you’ve paid a fee to be listed as a judge, the USCIS will probably discount it. Adjudicators have grown more suspicious about membership on editorial boards or “international awarding committees” whose selection process is inconsequential and where entry was made through a web form. The issue is whether merit-based selection played a role in inviting you.

Incomplete documentation. An invitation email does not prove participation. USCIS needs documentation that you participated in the judging, such as redacted score sheets, feedback forms, letters acknowledging your participation, certificates of service, or similar correspondence.

Field mismatch. Your judging should be in the same field or allied fields as your asserted area of extraordinary ability. It is hard to justify how a judgment by an AI engineer in a competition in supply-chain logistics that lacks any technical component of AI aligns with your assertion.

Single credits treated as sufficient. A single peer review may technically satisfy Criterion 4 Criterion 4 at Step 1. It would have little weight at Step 2. As is often observed by practitioners, persistent invitation by different companies over time shows a pattern of acknowledged expertise and not just happenstance. In general, two to four good credits from high-scale and selective events fare better than five weak credits from unimportant events.

Judging Doesn’t Just Tick a Box. It Feeds the Whole Case

Applicants tend to view the judging criterion separately from other criteria. However, the more strategic approach would be to have quality judging roles where the generated evidence will help fulfill multiple criteria.

Your track record as a recognized expert in your field, the same track record that led to the judging invitation in the first place, is also that supports Original Contributions claims. Being the member of the editorial board of the journal or the program chair of the recognized conference will help you check the Leading or Critical Role criterion at the same time. And if the organizing body of that conference prepares a press release featuring your participation in the evaluation committee as one of the prominent members, it will be your professional publication and help to meet Criterion 3.

Building toward a niche is also more strategic than it might seem. If your judging experience, your publications, and membership in some professional organizations will cover the same specialty (computational approaches to protein folding, distributed inference in edge AI and so on), your EB-1A eligibility case reads as a coherent body of work rather than a scattered list of credits.

What LevelUp Does Before You File

Most professionals in this position face a version of the same problem: they have some judging experience, they’re not sure how strong it is, and they don’t know what to build next without investing significant time and money in exploratory consultations.

LevelUp by EB1A Experts is designed for exactly such a stage. This platform analyzes your profile based on all ten criteria of the USCIS EB-1A and provides you with your readiness score and opportunity recommendations that target your specific weaknesses. Should your judging experience be poor, the recommendation offered by LevelUp will be neither general nor vague; the platform will identify those specific opportunities related to your field, such as conference review committees, industry awards selection panels you can participate in, grant evaluation cycles with application possibilities, and speaking engagements.

The Evidence Hub maps your existing documentation against USCIS criteria so you can see at a glance which criterion each document supports and what’s still missing. LevelUp is not a replacement for legal counsel. What it does is fill the void between “Maybe I can qualify” and entering lawyer review with a strategy-ready portfolio.

The Honest Picture

Hackathon judging, award panels, and technical reviews can all support an EB-1A petition. None of them do so automatically. The regulatory criterion is permissive by design; the adjudication process applies pressure in the opposite direction.

Engineers who succeed under these conditions are not those with the most impressive job titles. Instead, they recognize that the selection itself is the proof, and that USCIS does not care about what you judged, but rather that some credible entity in your industry recognized your credentials to be distinguished enough to rely on you for judging the work of others.

Build toward that standard. Document it from the moment the invitation arrives. The regulation gives you the opening; the paper trail is what walks through it.

Not sure whether your judging experience holds up? Run your profile through LevelUp’s free EB-1A readiness evaluation and find out exactly where you stand before you file.