Before I begin, I want to point out that this should be read as a memoir not a guidebook. These are the steps I took. My success does not imply that you need to follow these steps to win. The Fulbright application and the proposal within are quite literally extensions of you and your passions. That being said, I am still sharing my experience in the hopes that you can read it and take some bits and pieces that you find helpful and use them to supplement your Fulbright application process.
These steps pertain to my experience in applying to the Fulbright Research Award, where one spends roughly a 9-month grant period conducting research. This is in contrast to an academic Fulbright award where one pursues post-grad education, and the English Teaching Assistant Fulbright.
Step #1: Do research throughout your undergraduate education
Before I proceed, allow me an interlude to motivate doing research as an undergrad from a perspective beyond the Fulbright Award, even though this step is still immensely applicable to the Fulbright.
I was told as a freshman what getting a PhD in the sciences in the U.S. looked like financially, and it was the main factor in lighting a fire under my butt to overachieve.
If you get into a PhD program in a well-funded field like biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, engineering, mathematics, physical and mental health studies that are funded by the National Institute of Heath, etc.:
1) You don’t have to pay tuition… No, I am not kidding.
2) You are PAID a teaching assistant stipend (and fellowship if your field is particularly well-funded and/or you are an exceptional candidate) which is, in most instances, plenty to live on.
I’ll let that sink in. You can get a PhD for free, and get paid to do so. Sure, you can graduate and start a job at a salary of anywhere from $40k to $100k depending on the sector of industry, but when I was told that I can get a PhD FOR FREE, and get paid anywhere from $20k to $40k on top of that… I dropped everything and became a full-time nerd.
Now, one thing that differentiates getting a PhD from getting a bachelors, is research. And so, it is a bit tough to consider whether or not grad school is something you can see yourself dedicating ~5 years to without research experience to gauge with.
Getting involved in research in fields you think you might like to pursue in graduate school, is however, not only a first step towards determining if grad school is right for you, but is also the first step in your application to a Fulbright Research Award.
Step #2: Find your research passion
Getting research experience allows you to find your passion — something you can envision yourself being intellectually challenged with during grad school and potentially beyond. I have a blog post here focusing on the steps I took to get research experience as an undergrad, as well as some tips on the matter that I wish I’d been told when I was a freshman.
Once I found an area of work I fell in love with (the above-linked blog post addresses maximizing the possibility that you do in fact get the opportunity to find work that you fall in love with), I got serious about the Fulbright. Simultaneously, I got serious about grad school. By that I mean, I started to look into the schools I would like to go to. This makes sense only after you’ve found an area of research you’d like to pursue further, since schools have strengths in different areas.
When looking into graduate schools to apply to, I found the most helpful criteria to vet the programs is, the professors there doing research in the area of research you’ve just established is a passion of yours. This is because the biggest part of grad school will be your adviser. A grad school you’d want to apply to optimally has a few researchers whose interests/recent work jumps out to you as something enthralling to pursue. A good department will have brief profiles of the professors and their work, or at least group them into sub-fields (atomic, materials science, nuclear, and astrophysics, for example in a physics department). This will allow you to get the names of researchers to look into, and give you material (via the introductions of their recent research papers) to look into the specifics of their research program.
This process is identical to that which you ought to use to find a leader in the field to be your Fulbright affiliation/mentor/adviser.
Step #3: Find your Fulbright affiliation/mentor/adviser
One of the first sub-steps in this process ought to be narrowing down the countries. This sub-step is immensely easier if you work with the research adviser who introduced you to this field you’re interested in. As PhD students (intending on heading into academia) near defending their dissertation, they spend a lot of time at international conferences attending talks in the field, as well as giving talks on their recent work (in an effort to catch the interest of an institution/adviser they can do a post-doc with). This frequenting of international conferences usually continues for most of a researcher’s career, although of course decreases with age, research output requirements of their institution (4-year colleges versus research universities), and funding. Your adviser (having been successful in finding a job in academia) will without a doubt have spent a significant amount of time at international conferences like these. And thus, they will have a rough idea of “who’s who” in the international community, and subsequently what countries and universities therein are consistently putting out renowned research.
And here comes a bit of strategy in the game. After consulting with my adviser about which countries/universities I should set my sights on as I began my search for a Fulbright affiliation/mentor/adviser, I had a list of the following countries: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Demark, Switzerland, France, and Canada
While all of these countries had great researchers (in my field as well as I’m sure in all others), you must apply with a single project in mind, under a single adviser, in a single country. And so, it is the most logical to apply to a country that:
- is a research powerhouse in your field,
- has no language requirement, or has one that you meet (which can be found at the following link, https://us.fulbrightonline.org/countries/regions), and
- has a relatively high acceptance rate over the past 3 years (which you can look into by Googling “Fulbright acceptance statistics” or at the following link, https://us.fulbrightonline.org/study-research-eta-statistics).
Even though the potential Fulbright affiliation/mentor/advisers in some of these countries spoke fluent English and their departments taught courses in English, I did not want to risk my application standing out negatively for not meeting the recommended “novice” language requirement of the following countries: Germany, Japan, France, or Switzerland.
Next, I weighed the acceptance rates of the remaining countries with their prestige in the field I was interested in. I can imagine this being a very arduous step of checks and balances for other candidates, but for me, weighing the acceptance rate/prestige presented a very clear choice for my country to apply to.
The Netherlands is the quite literally the birthplace of the specific topic in the field I’m interested in, and they still have an outstanding community in that field throughout the country. As I was completing step #2 the summer prior to applying for the Fulbright, I had read up on the history of holography (the specific topic in my field I was interested in pursuing), and Gerard t’ Hooft, one of the founding fathers, is from Utrecht and he spawned a huge high-energy theoretical physics (the general field in which holography resided) presence in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is still to this day a great place to study string theory/quantum field theory/gravity/holography (all related sub-fields of high energy theoretical physics), with Amsterdam, Utrecht, Groningen, and Leiden all conducting great research.
Also, not only did the Netherlands Fulbright Awards not require a language proficiency, but as of 2012, more than 90% of the Netherlands speak fluent English. I very much intended to learn Dutch before my grant period started, but knowing that it wouldn’t hold me back from crafting a successful application allowed a much less stressful time frame compared to passing an A1 (or even B1) language exam before I even applied.
And simply some personal notes that ended up being a part of my application via my interview with my home university Fulbright candidate endorsement board:
- I am personally and politically enamored with the way the Netherlands has upheld the tenets of liberalism in recent history.
- The concept/social value of “Dutch directness” represents such a genuine and respectable aspect of a culture/society to me.
After determining the Netherlands was my first choice country, I began looking (in the same manner as mentioned in step #2) through the faculty pages of the physics and mathematics departments of UvA, Utrecht, Groningen, and Leiden, and reading the recent work of researchers whose work aligned with my objectives. I also took into account the prestige of the researchers, and I found that this was indeed a good move. By reaching out to leaders in the field I was ensuring that my affiliation/mentor/adviser would be well-known in their communities, and as such will have the resources/funding/prestige to take me on. Although I would basically be a free researcher to my affiliation/mentor/adviser, I would not be anywhere near the level of a PhD student or post-doc researcher they are used to working with. And so, the researcher’s funding, to have PhDs and post-docs who would act as intermediary “bosses” on a day-to-day basis during research, was a necessity.
I narrowed down my list of potential affiliation/mentor/advisers in the Netherlands to a few researchers whose work really stood out to me as research that I could see myself being continually enamored by, not only for the ~9-month Fulbright grant period, but even afterwards on into graduate school. In the one of the best gifts I have ever received, my REU (Research Experience for Undergraduate; it is a summer research program ran at a variety of hosting research universities funded by the National Science Foundation; it was through this experience I got my first shot at high-energy theoretical physics) adviser replied to an email from one of those leaders in the field I had reached out to. Unbeknownst to me until a week later, it was only after my REU advisor replied and spoke highly of me, that I received a warm reply from the researcher I had emailed, who has been one of the biggest names over the past 3 decades in string theory and supergravity in the world, never mind the Netherlands. After having some great correspondence over email regarding my research proposal, my application was set to begin.
Step #4: Crafting your personal statement and research proposal
Clearing the hurdle that is Step #3 is absolutely half the battle, but crafting these essays is still particularly arduous. The essays you must write are SHORT! I do not do well with page limits. Thankfully, this is where your university (if your university has a knowledgeable Fellowship Adviser — I was incredibly lucky to go to a college where one of the philosophy professors who was also a dean was an absolute wizard of fellowship knowledge and application experience) can help! On your campus there is a “Fulbright representative” (again, in my case it was this philosophy professor/dean of academic affairs) and after you have leaped the hurdle of step #3, you should alert them of your intention to apply and they will (SHOULD) work with you on editing your essays. Your newly acquired Fulbright affiliation/mentor/advisor (as well as another adviser in the field — my REU adviser in my case) will be a primary resource for help with the research proposal, but it does still need the eyes of a Fellowship Adviser to ensure it is clear to a non-specialist.
Step #5: The on-campus Fulbright committee interview
Your campus Fulbright representative will form an ad hoc committee of other professors on campus (usually academics/researchers who have been successful in winning scholarships of a similar nature throughout their career) and they will interview you about your application, intentions, qualifications, dreams/aspirations, etc. and they will (if you go to a large school and there are many applicants, they will cull the # of applicants down to those most likely to win; I did not go to a large school, only one other student applied alongside me) write an endorsement of you. This is also a great place to talk about hobbies and other things that make you and this opportunity unique that may not have made it into your personal statement! I talked about my hobby of Olympic weightlifting, that I was already in contact with the university’s club team through social media, and that I would be able to step outside of academia to learn the culture/language through making friends with the team. I also talked about the two personal items I mentioned regarding Dutch culture in step #3, about the Nordic model and Dutch directness.
Step #6: Press submit!
It is finally time to submit and cross your fingers! 😀
There is a semi-finalists announcement a few months before the official awardee announcement that you should not take lightly. I was under the impression that, as long as the candidate checks all the boxes, they were pushed onto the next round and named a semi-finalist. This is very much not the case! Everyone who applies for the Fulbright is the cream of the crop. Making semi finalist is huge!
Step #7: Possible interview with Fulbright board of host country
Depending on your country, you may be interviewed by the host country. I was not, so unfortunately I can’t speak to this.
Disclaimer
This blog represents only my own ideas, observations, and anecdotes; it is not representative of nor attributable to the US Government (USG) or Fulbright Commission
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