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Fulbright Program: U.S. Applicant Podcast

Transcript For: Fulbright Info Session: the Online Application

Jody Dudderar and Walter Jackson go over the online application and process. Recorded at the May 16, 2007 Fulbright Information Session.

Everyone is required to use the online application. The online application can be accessed on our website in the “Apply Now” link. But you are not going to go anywhere near that application until you are thoroughly familiar with “Thinking of Applying” and “How to Apply.” Lots of very important instructions there. When you go into the online application you will have to answer a series of preliminary questions. These questions are designed to provide you with specific forms in the online application. The purpose is, because this is a big program, and there are lots of aspects to the program, there are lots of forms, some of which you will not need. So, we are trying to avoid giving you forms that you do not need. For example, if you are applying to an English speaking country, you do not need the Foreign Language Report Form. By answering “no, I am not applying to a country where I need a foreign language report,” you will not get that report. So please take the time to read the four preliminary questions and answer them correctly. The good news is if you make a mistake and answer incorrectly, and later on realize, “I was going to Sweden and I didn’t think I needed to talk about how I was learning Swedish, I do need that form” and you can go back and change those preliminary questions.

When you go into the online application system, the first thing we are going to ask you is the country that you wish to study. Most of you are going to be applying for a grant for one particular country. You can only submit one application. One project, one application. The first box is going to give you the option to select three countries; those three options are not there to select primary and alternate options. Those three options are there because within the Fulbright U.S. Student program, there is the option to propose a multi-country project. It is one project that requires your presence in up to three countries to complete; that’s why those three country selections are there. 99% of you are probably going to be applying to one specific country. If you do opt for a multi-country proposal, keep in mind that you must be very careful about the countries that you select. They must be countries within the same geographic world region as defined by Fulbright, and they must be countries within that same geographic world region that will entertain a multi-country project. You will find all of this information in regard to eligible countries on the website, in the regional country summaries area. You cannot cross world region boundaries in a multi-country proposal, nor can you propose a multi-country project in Western Europe, or in combination with any of the countries in Western Europe. If you have any questions about whether or not a multi-country project is acceptable to a particular group of countries, check with us first before you file the application. The application will not give you an error message if you select incorrectly, so before you file that application check with us.

Next box is the field of study box; there is a drop down list of fields of study. As I said, we are going ask you to first give us a category whether it is academic or arts or whatever. Then that will bring up the appropriate fields of study list. You are going to have to select from one of our fields of study. It is pretty inclusive, but in a general sense. Pick the field of study that most closely corresponds with what you are proposing to do in your project, it will not pigeon whole your application, don’t worry about it. While we are talking about selecting a field of study I should mention to you that you can only submit one application and one project. This is where you are going to have to decide whether or not you are applying for one of the English Teaching Assistantships, or a study or research grant. You cannot apply for both, so you need to make a decision there. We are going to ask if you are applying through your U.S. college or university. We are also going to ask if you are applying for one of the special programs, you will note that there is a drop down list. If you are applying for one of those special programs, which includes – the bi-national business program in Mexico, some of the teaching assistantships, the Fulbright MTVU award – it is important that you identify your application accordingly. This tells us which particular screening committee, within the national screening committee, your application is going to be reviewed by. There are approximately 99 subcommittees within the national screening committee, and they meet all over the country. We want to make sure that we get your application to the correct committee for review. The hard copy deadline is October 22nd and our first screening committee meeting is in mid-November, so we have from the 22nd of October to mid-November to process what we anticipate will be over 6000 applications. So, we are not going to be reading them word for word, so it is important that when we ask you for this specific information that you make sure it is correct.

Also, one of the programs that we will be asking you about is if you are applying for the Critical Language Enhancement Awards. The Critical Language Enhancement Award program within the U.S. student program is part of the Presidents National Security Language Initiative. It allows for 3-6 months of language training abroad in selected languages, not in all languages but in selected languages. It allows you to apply for a grant to fund 3-6 months of language study abroad before you go onto your formal grant activities. It must be one of the languages that are on the list; you cannot apply for any of the languages in Western Europe. There is a special section on the website which will give you particulars on the Critical Language Enhancement Awards. It is also in the Fulbright brochure, the hardcopy.

Next very important issue is your degree level. Are you a bachelors candidate, a masters candidate, or a Ph.D. candidate? You need to identify your degree level accordingly. In those country competitions where the applicant pool warrants it there are several different screening committees and those screening committees read applications by degree level. If you are a B.A. you certainly don’t want to get into a Ph.D. review committee. You might be at a disadvantage. Make sure that you characterize your degree level correctly. There are instructions that say a B.A. is this, an M.A. is this, etc. This is very important to you so we can review your application correctly.

When you are working on the online application I would strongly encourage you, when you first go in and answer all the preliminary questions, there is a little link that says “read the instructions.” Please do, please do. There are some very specific style points that we want you to follow when completing our application. For instance, we are very fond of upper and lower case letters when used correctly. We don’t like all capital letters and we don’t like abbreviations. Remember that this information that you are putting into our system is going to be uploaded into our database. So you are responsible ultimately for making sure that the information that we have on you is correct. It’s important to you because it is from that information that we generate all of the documents that we use throughout a competition cycle: the presentation lists to the national screening committees, the letters that we are going to send out to you in January letting you know what your status is after the first stage of the process. So, it is important.

One of the things that you need to remember when you are working on our application online is that you are working in a data entry format, so it does not look at all like the final PDF version of the application that you will be submitting in hard copy. If you want a copy of the PDF version, the final hardcopy document of the application, you can print it out from the website. It will have a little Fulbright logo in the upper left hand corner. You can go on and print it out and use it as a visual aid. So, you will see the flow as you are working in the HTML in relationship to the final hardcopy. You can also preview individual PDF pages as you go through the application. So that you are on page one, there is a little preview button and you will get page one. This is particularly important when you are filling out narrative boxes, where you can put a few sentences of information in, because they are all dictated by length and you want to make sure what you have written actually appears as you have written it, and is not getting cut off so you can preview your pages as you go through the application page by page. We are going to ask you a really big favor. Before you mail that hardcopy application into us or before you give it to your Fulbright Program Adviser, would you please sign it. We would appreciate it.

If you print out a hardcopy of the application, you are going to notice that in several places we are asking you for the same information, and yeah we know about it. Specifically, you are going to come to very early on in the application, which is the PDF version of page 2, where we are going to ask you for two paragraphs. One on your future plans upon your return to the U.S., and one which is a brief synopsis of your project statement. That abstract of your project statement is going to be a very useful paragraph later on and it should be the what, where, why, when, and how of your project and we will talk about how valuable it is going to be later on when we get to the essays. The section on future plans is very important to the board of foreign scholarships, they are very interested in how you see yourself using the Fulbright experience when you come back to the United States and carry on in your future academic, artistic, or professional careers.

It’s also very important, you will notice, that we are asking you if you have dual citizenship. That is important in some countries, and can be an eligibility factor in some countries. If holding dual citizenship is an eligibility factor in a particular country it is noted in the Fulbright participating country summary. So that is one of the reasons why we ask you for that information. It is important to us. Keep in mind that we are talking about dual citizenship to the country which you are applying. If you have dual citizenship to Hungary and are applying to Italy, it is not an issue. If you have dual citizenship to Hungary and are applying for a grant to Hungary then it becomes an issue. If there are these eligibility issues it is noted in the individual country summaries on the website. If it’s not mentioned then it’s not an issue, it’s only mentioned if it is an issue.

Most of the front of the application is pretty much basic bio data on you, and I don’t think anybody is going to have much trouble with that. Just remember as you are working on all of this to follow our style points please.

Let’s talk about the parts of the application which are really most important to you guys. There are two essays. There is a project statement, a statement of proposed study or research, and there is a personal statement. The recommendation is that you create those essays offline, and then upload them into the application at a later date. We would not recommend cutting and pasting. It’s actually a rather nice little feature because for those of you who will be showing your essays to your campus adviser, it will allow you to email back and forth, and they don’t even need to go into the online application system to look at your essays. But what I want you to do is to go into the online application system and take a look at the instructions for formatting the essays. [There are] very specific instructions for font, margins, and type size. We want you to follow them. If you follow them, you will have no problem uploading your essays into the online application system. If you don’t follow our instructions all bets are off. 

Now you remember I mentioned that paragraph, that abstract of the proposal paragraph, when you are crafting your essay which is a max of two pages, single spaced, in a type that is legible to the human eye. When you are crafting that project statement, that first paragraph, that abstract that you used previously in the application, is a wonderful lead paragraph, it gives the what, where, why, when, and how, right up front. Someone can read that first paragraph and get a really clear picture of what you want to do, how you propose to do it, and why you want to go abroad to do it. I want you to keep your audience in mind. Individual members of the national screening committee can be reading 70, 80, or 90 applications. They don’t want to read through two pages of introduction to find out where you want to go and what you want to do. So give it to them right up front and then go on to elaborate.

I think the important thing about the project statement – this is a question that is often asked – you have two pages to tell us all of these things that you are going to do, to give us a timeline, to give us an idea of what it is you are going to do. You’ve got to be very clear in making these statements, and you’ve got to remember that the people who are reading this don’t know you. If we can’t figure out in these two pages how you intend to carry out your project then it’s not useful to us. Therefore we encourage you, whether you are at-Large or enrolled, to find someone who can read you essay, read your proposal for you, kind of cold, who doesn’t know a lot about you, about what you are proposing to do. And if they can’t understand what it is, then the chances are the people who are reading this can’t. Also, as Walter said you need to keep in mind your audience. The national screening committee, generally, for most of you will be reading applications based on the country or the world region to which you are applying. These are people at the college level faculty who have experience in that world region. They know what’s going on there. Their academic background, they could be in literature, they could be in anthropology, they could be in history, they could be in a whole range of fields, but they know the academic world and they know the country to which you are applying. You don’t need to be really simple in describing what it is you are going to be doing, but you do need to write for a wide range of people and a wide range of backgrounds.

Avoid discipline specific jargon. As Jody said not everybody that reads that application is necessarily going to be in your particular field. I should be able to pick it up and read it and understand what you are proposing to do. One of the things that you are going to find very useful, and this is especially important for people that are applying for one of the English Teaching Assistantships, in the how to apply section on the website you are going to find some very good instructions, some tips for completing the application. They are going to talk about the essay, the project statement and the direction that the essay should go in. I would strongly encourage you to go to how to apply and click on the tips for completing the application, and take a look at those. These are the points that our screening committee members are looking for in those essays; they are going to give you some very good suggestions on the flow of the essay.

The personal statement, one page, once again single spaced and a type that is legible to the human eye. There are no interviews at the national level; you will not be brought in and interviewed by the national screening committee. This is the one place in the application where the members of the national screening committee, and ultimately the members of the Fulbright commissions and programs sponsors abroad should you get recommended, get to know you. They know where you want to go, what you want to do, and how you propose to do it. Now they get to know you as an individual. So you are going to tell us all about yourself. You are not going to rehash information that we have had in other places in the application, you are going to tell us all about yourself, all about your life, in one page. It needs to be crafted well. There are a lot of people who put a lot of emphasis in a well written personal statement because they feel they get to know you individually.

One of the things we like to say is that in the proposal you don’t have a lot of opportunity to be really creative because there are specific things you need to get to. The personal statement does allow a little room for creativity. It allows you to talk about, as Walter said, what motivates you, how you got to this point in your life where you want to spend a year in another country following a pursuit that might be totally different than what you thought you would be doing in this point in your life. So do use the personal statement to give us insight into you as a person, not just all this paper that we have been looking at so far. The screening committee, I find, really does enjoy reading these statements, because they can give insight into who you are. So do take that seriously. We do.

While you are working on these two essays I want you to keep in mind the strong cultural component of the Fulbright program, as I mentioned earlier. The process of community engagement while you are abroad, think about how you see yourself engaging members of the host country community. Are you going to do it curricularly or are you going to do it extra-curricularly, or are you going to do it both ways? This needs to be somewhere covered in those essays. Once again go to the tips for completing the application. You will find a wealth of information there. For those of you that are going to a non English speaking country, or if your project requires knowledge of another language, you must have a foreign language evaluation completed by a college or university language professor or professional language teacher. You must also submit the foreign language background report, which tells us about any work you have done in language acquisition, and tells us about any plans you may have to increase your language acquisition over the next year. Keeping in mind that you are applying in October, most of you will be picking up your grants in September or October, so you have pretty much another year to work on your language. This is also the place in the application where you are going to talk about the language study that you propose as part of the Critical Language Enhancement Program, it is on form 8A, which is the foreign language background report. Language is very important in this program, and you ability in it, and your ability to communicate and be an effective citizen ambassador to get abroad is important.

There are three letters of reference that are required. They should be from college or university professors or professionals in your field, who know you and cannot only talk about you as an individual, how academically or professionally prepared you are to carry it out, but can also talk about the project itself. Its feasibility, and the resources abroad that you have identified to carry it out. When I mention resources abroad let’s very quickly touch on affiliation.

All Fulbright grantees, regardless of where they are going or what they will be doing, must have a host country affiliation. The nature of that affiliation can vary from country to country or from project to project. Your responsibility to secure that affiliation abroad can vary from country to country. There is a section in the individual country summaries that deals with affiliations. If you have any questions about your responsibility in the process, the nature of an affiliation that would be appropriate to a particular country, that’s a question that is best addressed to one of the country program managers. What you cannot do is affiliate with an American organization or entity abroad. It must be a host country organization, academic, non governmental, it varies from country to country. Let’s get back to references, only three letters of reference may be submitted. As I said they should be from people that know you well, and can comment not only on you but on your project. Read the instructions on the reference that we are giving to the recommender before you decide on the individuals. Take a look at what we are asking them to talk about in their recommendation, and make sure that those people that you select can adequately address each one of those talking points. It’s important. The foreign language report form and references can be requested online, they should be attached online. They also need to be submitted in hardcopy.

In the application itself, you will have the opportunity to register individuals that you wish to complete references and the foreign language report. What this means is you register them to receive an email from our application system, asking that person to complete a letter of reference or a foreign language report for you. Before you register someone make sure you have told them that you are asking them to do a reference, and that they agree to it. We also ask that you give both referees and language report evaluators a short description of your project. As Walter said, we want them to address you and your ability to carry out this project, so they are going to need to know what it is you want to do. If it is a language evaluator they are going to need to know the level of language that you need in order to be successful in this project and your project will tell them a bit about that. When you register them, they will receive an email from the system asking them to do the reference online. They will follow the instructions and then they will be able to submit it and it becomes part of your application. It is very important that you also obtain a printed signed copy of that letter of reference in a sealed envelope from that individual that you will then submit with your hardcopy application. Just because they have submitted it online, that’s not the end of their responsibility, we do need a hardcopy of that. So remind them again, we tell them in the letter and the email, just remind them that we want it both online and in hardcopy format. This is because of the size and the nature of this program. We need it in both formats, it helps facilitate reading overseas if it is online, but we need the paper copy for various reasons here at IIE.  

I was talking very briefly and I mentioned that all Fulbright grantees regardless of where they are going or what they are going to be doing, have to have a host country affiliation. It can vary from country to country about specifically your responsibility in that process. I want to also add that the only individuals that would not go about securing their own affiliations in the host countries, and should not do so, are those people that are applying for one of the English teaching assistantships. If you are applying for an English teaching assistantship, the Fulbright commission in the host country will secure your placement at either a high school or university or secondary school. They will take care of your placement for you so you don’t have to go about securing it. 

We want one complete academic record, we want to know every course you have taken and every grade you have received. If you have transferred from one institution to another and courses and grades have followed you that’s fine. If you have transferred from one institution to another, and we are only going to see the transfer of credits, then we have to go about getting copies of all the institutional transcripts. Just keep in mind we want one official complete academic record, every course, every grade.  If your current transcript only shows a transfer of credit, and does not list all of the courses and grades that you received from work at the previous institution then yes. We want a complete academic record, we want to know every course you have taken and every grade you have received for every one of those courses. We are going to have plenty of time for questions. If you did a study abroad experience, in many cases your transcript will only list the courses and credit non credit. You do need to get a copy of those grades as well. Talk to your study abroad adviser or your study abroad program provider on how to get those grades. You can always get grades for the study abroad you just need to find out how to do it.