The four recommendation letters from my approved EB-2 NIW petition: two from people I worked with directly (my postdoc supervisor and my PhD advisor) and two independent letters from senior scientists I never worked with. I drafted all four myself, and the recommenders have agreed to share them.

Reading them side by side shows how a dependent letter differs from an independent one, how each letter points to concrete work and citations, and how they tie the research back to national importance. Names, institutions, dates, grant numbers and paper titles are replaced with placeholders.

The PDF has all four letters in one file. Add the Word version if you want to edit them and draft letters for your own recommenders.