It's a Fulbright Friday!

Advising Corner

GETTING STARTED

Here are some ideas for getting started with the Fulbright application:

1. Enroll in the Fulbright Canvas Course.
2. Research the type of Fulbright award you hope to pursue and in which location.
3. Learn more about eligibility and the application components for Fulbright.

RESOURCES

1. Visit the Center for Research & Fellowships (310 Car Barn, 3520 Prospect Street NW, Monday to Thursday in summer, 9 AM to 5 PM ET) to review example essays.
2. Review our online worksheets to help you get started with your statement of grant purpose for a research, study, or English teaching assistant grant.

IMPORTANT TIPS

1. Identify your 3 Fulbright recommenders as soon as possible! Review “Instructions For Study/Research Recommendation Writers” and “Instructions For English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Recommendation Writers” to get a better sense of what writers should address. 
2. Determine if you will need a Foreign Language Evaluation form and, if so, identify an individual to complete it. According to Fulbright: 

• "For Commonly-Taught Languages: The Foreign Language Evaluation should be completed by a professional language teacher, preferably a university professor. The language evaluator cannot be related to the applicant.
• For Less-Commonly-Taught Languages: If a professional language teacher is not readily available, a college-educated native-speaker of the language can be used. The language evaluator cannot be related to the applicant."

Georgetown: Your Institutional Affiliation

Each year, we receive the question: Should I list Georgetown University in the Fulbright application?

YES! Please do! Alumni and student applicants can apply through Georgetown University (internal deadline of September 1 for all application materials, including recommendations), be matched with a campus mentor, and take part in the campus review process.

Individuals who apply after September 1 (or "late applicants") can still list Georgetown University in the application portal (pictured above), but will not be matched with a mentor for the campus review process.

Note: The only time alumni would not apply through Georgetown University is if they have enrolled in a degree program at another institution after their Georgetown degree. They must then apply through that institution or as an At Large candidate.

Fulbright Information Sessions

Georgetown Fulbrighter Spotlight

Rushil Vashee (SFS'25)

Research - India

From Rushil Vashee (SFS'25) - "Broadly, I'm studying the institutional and behavioral determinants of economic access and participation in India. My research focuses on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India's real-time digital payments system that now processes more daily transactions than Visa or Mastercard. I’m exploring what intrinsic features of UPI enable nearly 70% of the country to use it, designing a quantitative model informed by semi-structured field interviews across the country. Through this work, I hope to uncover insights that can drive efforts to expand access to digital financial and social systems in emerging and advanced economies."

Application Suggestion: "The best advice I received from a mentor was to clearly explain why I needed to be in India to pursue my project," including informal conversations, interviews, and using UPI. "Those real-world insights, which simply couldn’t be captured from afar, became central to refining my research questions and ensuring my quantitative model reflected the realities of economic access in India."

It's a Fulbright Friday!