Guidelines for Applying for a Fulbright Student Program Grant
Prepared by Jonathan Auerbach, Professor of English and campus advisor.
(Download guidelines in pdf format)
What follows is a set of guidelines and explanations for UMCP students—graduating seniors, alumni, and graduate students—who are thinking of applying, or plan to apply for a Fulbright grant to study, teach and/or conduct research abroad. The Fulbright website itself contains a wealth of information about the U.S. Student Program that you should closely consult, but since this information is sometimes a bit difficult to navigate, here is a streamlined summary.
DEADLINES
Applications open in the spring (usually May) and the campus deadline for turning in all application materials is set four months later, around mid-September, to be followed by the Fulbright deadline a month after, in mid-October. The month gap between the campus deadline and the Fulbright deadline is to allow for campus interviews, usually held the first week in October (see below). Preliminary notifications by Fulbright are made starting in January of the next year, with final decisions in the spring, and with most grants for an academic year starting the following fall. That means for a 2008-9 grant, the application is available beginning May 2007. It's therefore important to get an early start in this long and involved process!
ELIGIBILITY
See guidelines on the Fulbright site, and well as specific requirements for each individual country, which might be different. Generally the program is reserved for graduating seniors, recent graduates, master's students, and doctoral students who have completed their qualifying exams, but not finished their dissertations. You must be a U.S. citizen to apply.
KINDS OF GRANTS
Although there is a single application form, there are actually different types of grants, either a full research grant (for undergraduates this research will be combined with study), a creative and performing arts grant, or in the case of certain countries, one that combines a research component with a teaching opportunity. See the Fulbright website for a list of countries offering teaching assistantships.
THINKING OF APPLYING
Fulbrights are country specific, which means that in almost all cases you must decide on a particular country and a particular kind of grant described and listed as being offered by that country. You therefore need to consider carefully which country to select. In most cases, especially for advanced degree candidates, there will be little question about where you need to conduct research, but for graduating seniors you may need to focus on your geographical interests, and then weigh various possibilities country by country. One consideration is the competitiveness of a given country: the Fulbright site lists for previous years the number of applications versus number of grants for each country. Other considerations include the feasibility of your research project/study for that given country, your language skills, as well as your academic strengths. As campus adviser, I am available to discuss these considerations with you, but again, you need to begin this process well in advance of the September campus deadline.
APPLICATION COMPONENTS
All sections of the Fulbright application needs to be filled out and submitted online, as well as printed out in a hard copy and submitted to the campus National Scholarship Office in 0104 Armory Building by the mid-September deadline. Make sure you keep to acceptable lengths for each online entry, and note that faxes and emails will not be accepted for the supporting material. In addition to general information about your date of birth, address, academic record, work experience, and so on, these are the main components:
Statement of Proposed Study or Research:
This is a two-page essay that outlines your plans for research as specifically and persuasively as possible. This is the most crucial element of the application. It needs to be composed and revised carefully, a process that I am available to help you with. See Fulbright website for more details about writing this essay, which usually takes about a month and 2-3 different drafts to get just right.
Curriculum Vitae:
This is a one-page narrative (not a list) that serves as a personal statement of your intellectual history and interests. Again, I am available to help you draft and revise this important essay.
Foreign Language Report:
For those candidates applying to countries with language requirements (see individual country grant descriptions), this is a confidential form to be downloaded and given to a campus evaluator who will both fill out and submit online and provide a hard copy to the campus National Scholarships office. Students are responsible for arranging for this evaluation, which is usually done by professors at the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures on campus. Accompanying this report (form 8) is a Language Background Report (form 8A) which you should fill out online and also submit as a hard copy. If you have no knowledge of the host country's language, and need none to apply, then you don't have to submit these forms.
Letters of Reference: You will need three confidential letters (in English), to be submitted online (recommended) and in hard copy (required), in a sealed and signed envelope. It is a good idea to think through the application process before approaching anyone for a letter, using the application materials to help you choose your letter writers, who should know you and your work well, including the specifics of your research proposal. Please give your recommenders plenty of time to write in advance of the campus deadline.
Letter of Affiliation: In many cases, especially for advanced degree candidates, host countries, as detailed in their grant descriptions, will strongly recommend or require a letter of affiliation (in English) from an organization, academic institution, or an archive formally inviting you to conduct research with them for a given period of time. Since these letters usually are mailed in hard copy from abroad, you need to request them well before the campus deadline.
INTERVIEWS
Once you submit your complete application online and in hard copy to the National Scholarships Office (0104 Armory) by mid-September, it will remain frozen: the national Fulbright Screening Committee will not yet review any applications until its own deadline a month later, but you will no longer have access to it. This gives us a chance to convene a campus interviewing committee, usually a set of four professors from a variety of disciplines, who will be given a copy of your application essays in advance of talking with you during a 15-20 minute interview, usually held the first week of October.
On the basis of this interview (not an intense grilling), you will be given a (confidential) ranking, and I might also unsubmit or unfreeze your application, which would allow you to return to your essays to incorporate suggestions from the committee to strengthen them and make them more effective. (As campus adviser, I have access to your applications once they are submitted online, but not before then.) After these interviews are conducted, we mail all the completed hard copy applications and supporting materials by the mid-October deadline to the Institute of International Education (IIE), which administers the Fulbright Student Program.
Please feel free to contact me (auerbach@umd.edu) with any questions about any aspect of this application process.