I applied for Exceptional Promise on Jun 7th and unfortunately received a rejection email on June 26th.
I will genuinely appreciate your help for appeal/reapply as my current visa expires on Aug 4th, meaning I need to leave a job that I enjoyed a lot(which doesn’t provide sponsorship)… So I would sincerely appreciate your help!
Based on the feedback, I think the key issue across my application is that my evidence are mostly self-authored and lacked 3rd party verification. There’s a translated article(with link) in MC that has been obviously overlooked. But unfortunately I don’t think I can provide more 3rd party evidences for other criterias. This is because I worked at a social enterprise under a Chinese university where most awards/publicity are given to project groups rather than individuals (so only naming the project lead / uni). On top of that, as a lot of our clients are government, it’s difficult to disclose more details/numbers or verify them in 3rd party channels. I’m aware that is a major issue that my name was never mentioned, but is there anything I can do with existing materials?
Please find the documents I submitted:
Personal Statement
CV
Three LoRs
LoR1: VP of my previous employer Company A
LoR2: Professor that I met through a project outside work
LoR3: CTO at a listed company I worked with at Company A
MC
Certificate of an International Award given to a project(smart platform) that I worked as a lead PM
News Clipping of another International Award given to the platform/technologies used in the same project above
Reference Letter from VP of another listed company I worked with at Company A
OC1
I explained why the smart platform is innovative, the key features etc. and included:
Screenshot and link of the US patent of the technology used to develop the platform (patent itself is not under my name, but the VP in LOR1)
Screenshots of the presentation deck used for applying to the award above which shows the framework/structure of the smart platform I developed.
It follows the structure of evidence 4 but with more screenshots of analysis available on the platform. It’s based on another US patent under the name of LOR1 VP and another VP from Company A who is my referee in OC3.
OC3
I explained how I contributed significant growth in three aspects:
how my experience uniquely enabled the development of key features in the smart platform + screenshots of interface of key features
how I led creating new product offerings for Company A + screenshots of new analysis features as in pitch deck
how I initiated partnerships and development of new products with companies (including the listed company of referee of MC) outside my industry
Reference letter: another VP of Company A supporting the above
An additional question is that I was surprisingly approved for OC2 even though I didn’t apply for it and there’s no mention of it in the feedback. Is this a pure mistake? I wouldn’t be surprised as I can tell the assessor just skimmed through my application. Thank you again everyone, I genuinely appreciate your help!
They have provided detailed feedback and result of the criteria you applied for. The yes no table doesn’t mean they skimmed through and approved OC2.
Did you highlight in your application about Chinese universities not giving individual awards or mentions? Any support letter from the social enterprise under the university highlighting your individual contribution and the same that although the awards mention teams, your contribution was significant. Your evidence in OC1 is completely self authored with no validation in support letters.
Your application has a lot of self authoring with supporting screenshots not clearly demonstrating that you did this work. You need your support letters in evidences clearly mentioning your significant contribution and impact. Plus elements like news articles, website links, blogs, PR, social channel proofs etc to validate.
Based on the assessor’s feedback, you have not verfied your self-authored evidence. This can be done with any 3rd party evidence which may include screenshots of your company’s communication method that can prove your authencity, news, reference letter, certificates and more.
If you are in doubt, you may appeal by point out to your specific file and paragraph to make assessor understand that they have made the mistake. It does not cost anything, but it is time consuming just to get another feedback for your next application though.
Thank you for your suggestion! I didn’t mention Chinese universities not giving individual awards as I realized that could be an issue for my application and thought it’be better to avoid directing assessor’s attention to it?
I will revise the recommendation letters to be more specific in mentioning my contribution. Although it’d be difficult to find any 3rd party evidence directly linked to me, I’ll see if there’s anything that can be useful.
I might be able to secure a reference letter from another high-level executive from the social enterprise for OC1, but that would bring the total number of reference letters in my application to 6, would that be considered too much?
Thank you, I think I will just submit a new application given the time. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can provide any further 3rd party evidence with my name directly mentioned. But for OC1, I’ll check and see if there’s any other news to support the innovative aspect of my work and maybe add another reference letter for that…
The challenge with your application is that you don’t have evidence that are credited to you, unfortunately this is the standard requirement for demonstrating you meet the criteria. There are many applicants who submit their application, if your evidence doesn’t have the expected quality and compelling proof from third party sources, you are most likely to get the same outcome.
Thank you Francisca for your honest review. I’m afraid it’s unlikely that I will find anything directly credited to me but I’ll find a few more news articles to support the impact/innovation of the group work and give it another try.
@Francisca_Chiedu@alexnk@pahuja Hi everyone, I submitted a new application and received an endorsement for EP this week. Your feedback was important for how I restructured my materials and I genuinely appreciate your help and advice. Thanks a lot!
