Analysed 5,000 EB-2 NIW appeal decisions. Where petitions actually die, by prong.
Pulled prong-level findings from 5,087 AAO decisions on NIW petitions. Quick caveat: AAO data skews toward denials because denials are what get appealed, so this shows why cases fail rather than how often they succeed.
Of 3,919 dismissals that named a specific prong, 83% failed on Prong 1, national importance. Prong 2 showed up in 29%. Prong 3 barely registers, under 5%. Whatever you think the hard part is, in the appeal record it's overwhelmingly Prong 1.
Dug into what those Prong 1 failures actually look like. The biggest gap by far is insufficient quantification, flagged in 2,500 dismissals. After that: no evidence of outside interest in the work (1,116), inconsistent endeavor scope (868), and support letters aimed at the wrong thing (660). Adjudicators generally accept that the field matters. What they keep refusing to accept is that this particular endeavor has demonstrated national reach, and vague petitions give them nothing to work with.
The RFE numbers surprised me more. Across 3,235 cases with an RFE, 17% resolved favorably overall. Split by what the RFE challenged and it stops being one number:
RFE on Prong 1 only: 2.7% cured (29 of 1,062)
RFE on Prong 2 only: 20.5% cured (60 of 292)
A Prong 2 RFE is recoverable. Credentials, letters, track record, all things you can go get. A Prong 1 RFE means the adjudicator doesn't believe your endeavor has national reach, and the response almost never changes their mind. Roughly seven times harder to cure.
So the national importance case has to be built before filing. By RFE stage it's mostly too late.
Data source: visalytics.com, where you can run your own profile against this dataset for a free personalized assessment. Data is freely available with no login required
Edit: RFE figures above span both AAO appeals and approval reports. Appeals-only: 1.1% Prong 1, 4.5% Prong 2, around 4x gap.