The Fulbright Experience: Post-Graduate Grant Opportunities
So, you’re graduating soon... What now?
You can jump right into the career field, take some time off, transition into another degree program, or look into scholarships, grants, and/or fellowships that are designed for recently graduated college and graduate students. There are plenty of opportunities that provide monetary awards and other types of assistance intended to support the graduate and undergraduate education of outstanding students. These scholarships are recognized as among the most prestigious available and can have a life-changing impact.
Among one of these fellowships is the Fulbright Grant, which provides individuals the ability and funding to research, study and/or teach in over 140 countries. Michelle Nguyen, the Cap & Co. Project Manager, spent the year before joining Cap & Co. fulfilling a Fulbright grant in Indonesia. Read about her experience and some application tips below.
I had no idea what I was going to do after graduation…
With May and the graduation stage in sight, I had no idea what was next for me. I knew I wanted to go to graduate school, but also knew that I didn’t want to go right away. Then, I saw an advertisement for Fulbright on campus and decided to look deeper into it. I was pursuing a degree in education, hoping to eventually end up in a career that marries local, national, and international policy and education, and felt like the English Teaching Assistant (ETA) opportunity offered through Fulbright could be perfect for me.
I ended up spending hours browsing the different countries and programs and finally settled on Indonesia. I submitted my application in September of 2018 and didn’t think about it again until March of 2019 where I was casually checking my email and saw that I was a finalist for the ETA grant in Indonesia. I convinced myself that I probably wouldn’t get it and was in complete shock that I was scheduled to leave for Indonesia in just a few months from receiving the finalist email.
It didn’t feel real until I was on a flight from my hometown in Connecticut to begin my 36 hour journey to Salatiga, Indonesia, where I would spend the next 10 months teaching English to tenth graders. The time I spent in Indonesia was the most rewarding experience, while simultaneously being the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. It was difficult to navigate an entirely new country and language by myself, but the people I met and the students I taught made every minute worth it. There is so much I could say about my experience, but then this blog post would quickly become a novel. If you want to read through the blog posts I posted while I was abroad, you can check that out here.
Unfortunately, I did have to leave early because of COVID-19, cutting my grant two months shorter than planned. However, those eight months I spent in Salatiga taught me more about myself and the world than most of my 22 years prior to that. Living abroad, especially in a country that is so different than the United States, revealed how sheltered I was for so much of my life. Even though I was the teacher, I learned more from my students and friends there than I could have ever taught them. I will take what I learned from being an ETA into every new experience, including graduate school, and I am so glad I took this post-graduate opportunity.
Interested in Fulbright? Here are some applications facts and tips.
Getting Started on Your Fulbright Application
Check out your eligibility status here.
You will need to determine whether you’re applying with your undergraduate institution or at-large. If applying with your university, make sure to reach out the Fulbright advisor assigned at your college.
Decide whether you want to research/study or teach English. The type of grant you apply for will determine the materials you will need to prepare. Check out the different application components here.
Review the country opportunities here. (Over 140 options!)
The application typically opens up in the spring and closes in early fall (around October 1). This means you will have to apply almost a year before you would leave for your grant, so make sure you prepare for this and mark your calendar!
Application Tips:
Make sure you do your research. You select the individual country and program you apply for, which means you need to be intentional with your choice. Each country’s program is run independently so each program is completely different. An English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Taiwan will have an entirely different experience from a Research Fellow in the Netherlands. Take some time browsing all of the country and their different programs before deciding which you want to apply to.
The aspects that helped me decide which program I was going to pursue, after deciding that I would apply for an ETA grant, were: size of the cohort, the age of the student I would teach, and the geographic area of the country (I wanted to be in Southeast Asia). Make a list of non-negotiables (wanting to be in your own home versus placed with other ETAs or in a homestay, access to airports/travel, etc.) and place those at the forefront of your search.
The application is intense, but just take it slow. If you need to take a step back, save it, and return later, do that! It’s long, asks a lot of questions, and requires multiple essays that are time consuming. However, put as much effort as you can into it. This being said, start early. It’s not a bad idea to start browsing countries the summer before you’re planning to apply so that you can spend a few months working on your application.
Set personal deadlines for yourself and make sure you edit your essays multiple times before sending them in. You don’t want to try and submit your application the last minute! I submitted mine a week before the actual deadline so that I would not run into any technical issues since thousands of people are also applying at the same time as you.
The worst part is the wait. In the meantime, don’t let your life pause. Keep job searching, pursuing graduate opportunities, or other plans to ensure that you’re not putting all your eggs into one basket. It may take as long as May of the following year to hear back about your application, so it’s good to prepare for any outcome. Celebrate submitting the application and try not to get too caught up in the waiting game.
If you’re looking into applying for Fulbright or other teaching abroad programs, please feel free to reach out to me at michelle@capandcompany.com — I would be happy to chat more about my experience and help you on figuring out your journey.