Tuesday, May 12, 2009

What does it take to get a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant?

On May 1st the 2010-2011 Fulbright U.S. Student Program officially opened and I entered my 10th year as the Fulbright Program Adviser (FPA) for the U.S. Student Program at the University of Chicago. My first five years were in the Office of International Affairs where I advised both graduate and undergraduate students on this competition and the last four years I’ve been in the Dean of Students Office in The College and I have served as the FPA for undergraduate students/recent alumni.

As you can see in the following table, there has been a significant increase in the number of applications and Fulbright awards to graduating seniors and recent alumni at The University of Chicago.



We have a very globally minded student body here in The College and it’s no surprise that a little program promotion and making time to advise prospective applicants have produced positive results.

As for the answer to “what does it take to get a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant?”….only students in and alumni from The College at the University of Chicago can schedule a meeting with me to learn the answer.

**Update**

After one comment and a couple of e-mail messages about wanting an answer to the question "What does it take to get a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant?" I thought I would add the following which I copied and pasted in my reply to Anonymous in my comments section:

Part of the success of students in the College is simply due to an increase in the number of applications. The other part of their success is that most applicants start their application in spring and don't wait until July or August as that is too late in the game. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program application is rather simple compared to lengthy papers that students write for classes. The difference with the Fulbright application is that it's not submitted for a grade but rather for a significant amount of money in what is often times a very competitive provess (depending on the country of course). I do think that the letter(s) of affiliation (for the full grant) is a key component to pushing an application to the final round and then onto the recipient list. Securing a letter of affiliation takes time and this is why applicants should start thinking of their applicantions now and not in summer.

4 comments:

  1. I read the whole thing and at the end it says, only students in and alumni from The College at the University of Chicago can schedule a meeting with me to learn the answer.

    That makes the whole article useless.

    ReplyDelete
  2. @Anonymous ~ Thank you for your comment! I see your point about the article being useless to those who are not in the College at the University of Chicago. If, however, my obscure message gets one prospective applicant to meet with me about their Fulbright ideas and I can convince them to apply and offer them some advise on their application along the way then it might have been a worthy post.

    Part of the success of students in the College is simply due to an increase in the number of applications. The other part of their success is that most applicants start their application in spring and don't wait until July or August as that is too late in the game. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program application is rather simple compared to lengthy papers that students write for classes. The difference with the Fulbright application is that it's not submitted for a grade but rather for a significant amount of money in what is often times a very competitive provess (depending on the country of course). I do think that the letter(s) of affiliation (for the full grant) is a key component to pushing an application to the final round and then onto the recipient list. Securing a letter of affiliation takes time and this is why applicants should start thinking of their applicantions now and not in summer.

    Thanks again for taking the time to comment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi,

    We have just added your latest post "What does it take to get a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant?" to our Directory of Grant Programs . You can check the inclusion of the post here . We are delighted to invite you to submit all your future posts to the directory for getting a huge base of visitors to your website and gaining a valuable backlink to your site.


    Warm Regards

    Project Grant Team

    http://projectgrant.info

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi,

    We have just added your latest post "What does it take to get a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant?" to our Directory of Grant Programs . You can check the inclusion of the post here . We are delighted to invite you to submit all your future posts to the directory for getting a huge base of visitors to your website and gaining a valuable backlink to your site.


    Warm Regards

    Project Grant Team

    http://projectgrant.info

    ReplyDelete