I140 approved
I got approval today and wanted to share some detail as I also got a lot of information from other approval postings.
PD: Mid 2024
PP upgraded: March 2026
Approved in 40 business days
Current position: PhD candidate in US
Previous Education: Both Masters and Bachelors in US
Field: Biology
Research Papers: 5 papers at the time of filing - all coauthors.
Citations: ~100 at the time of filing.
Peer-review: 0
Rec Letters: 5 (1 dependent, and 4 independent)
Law firm: Chen
I had two concerns the whole time - having a very broad PE and not changing too much from what people call ‘the templated application from Chen’. I just trusted them to work for what I paid so let them handle everything, just checked some factual detail and submitted. In the end I got it approved so maybe it wasn’t such a big deal.
One other thing I’m regretting at this point is not applying for pp from the beginning. Decided to upgrade after 2 years of waiting, and ended up paying more money. The backlog just builds up higher and higher so if you are considering upgrading to pp, just do it.
Hope this helps.