what's a schedule A? pls help

Schedule A does not exist anymore and haven't been mentioned in the Visa bulletin since Feb 07. Al nurses are affected by retrogression currently

One does not apply for Schedule A. It is not a visa. It just pertains to Nurses and PTs who are pre-determined by the US Dept. of Labor as being in short. It also just happens that when 50,000 visas were made available in 2005, they also called that Schedule A category to differentiate that nurses and PTs are given exclusive visas. That category is now gone as Anna pointed out but the name Schedule A persisted to pertain to nurses and PTs.

That is it. It is just a name. Nurses and PTs can only apply for GCs or H1C working visas (thru an employer that will petition for them) and majority go the route of GC as the H1C working visa is limited only to 14 or so hospitals and 500 a year is only given out. Plus add in the fact that hospitals included in that list may not be the safest of places.