Mark Your Calendars!
JHU-Specific Deadlines for All Applicants
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Monday, August 21: Campus deadline for all applicants to have a complete (though not final!) application in the Fulbright online application system (see below)
Events for JHU Fulbright Applicants
No registration required - just go to the Zoom link provided here.
Fulbright-Sponsored Events
Fulbright program staff at IIE offer virtual info sessions and office hours throughout the summer. Registration required (via links provided here).
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Tuesday, August 8, 2023, 2pm-3pm ET: Alumni Ambassador Panel - ETA
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Thursday, August 10, 2023, 2-3 pm ET: Study/Research Q&A Webinar
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Monday, August 14, 2023, 2-3 pm ET: ETA Q&A Webinar
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Weds., August 16, 2023, 4-5 pm ET: Regional Office Hours: East Asia/Pacific
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Friday, August 18, 2023, 4-5 pm ET: Regional Office Hours: South/Central Asia
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Monday, August 21, 2023, 4-5 pm ET: Regional Office Hours: Europe/Eurasia (Study/Research)
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Friday, August 25, 2023, 4-5 pm ET: Regional Office Hours: Middle East & North Africa
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Tuesday, August 29, 2023, 4-5 pm ET: Regional Office Hours: Sub-Saharan Africa
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Thursday, August 31, 2023, 4-5 pm ET: Regional Office Hours: Western Hemisphere
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Campus Deadline FAQ's
What is the campus deadline?
The campus deadline is when NFP requires Fulbright applicants to have a complete (though not final) application in the Fulbright online application system. That means you need to:
- fill out all sections of the application,
- upload your essays and transcript(s),
- ensure your recommenders and, if applicable, language evaluator submit their materials.
You do not need to officially "submit" your application in the Fulbright portal for the campus deadline. As advisors, we have read-only access to your materials in the Fulbright system whether or nor you have submitted them. (Officially submitting your application is essential, but comes later in the process, just before the national deadline.)
We also ask that you provide us with the text of the Short Answers, SOP, and PS that you uploaded in your online application by submitting them as a single Word document on Canvas (assignment titled "Submit: Campus Deadline Drafts"). This to so we can provide additional feedback on your essays after the campus deadline.
What the campus deadline is not: Rest assured, it is not the last time you can work on your application materials! You can and should continue to refine your essays and edit/proofread other portions of your application to ensure everything is in the best shape possible by early October.
When is the campus deadline?
Monday, August 21 at 9am ET
Why is there a campus deadline? Why is it so much earlier than Fulbright's national deadline on October 10?
It is standard for fellowship advising offices like ours to have a campus Fulbright deadline that falls several weeks in advance of the final national deadline. This is because Fulbright wants every applicant applying through a college or university to have an interview arranged by their campus advisor when feasible. Here at Hopkins, where we have several dozen applicants each year, we need time to organize the interview process.
So, we ask for your complete (though, again, not final) application in late August so we can: check applications for completeness / major issues: confirm who has progressed enough to participate in a campus interview; have time to organize those interviews; and prep PDFs of applications to be sent to the interviewers well in advance of the actual meetings.
A natural follow-up question: what interview?!?
The Fulbright campus interview is designed to provide additional feedback on your project from someone new and ideally with expertise of a different kind than ours; it is *not* a competitive process meant to eliminate anyone from the applicant cohort. We'll say more about interviews in our next newsletter and we won't start scheduling them until after the campus deadline. In the meantime, both the ETA and Study/Research Canvas sites have detailed information on the interview process (see the sections on "Panel Discussion").
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Start Filling Out Your Online Application
While the essays and short answers are the core of your Fulbright application, the other parts matter, too! Below we offer detailed advice on how to ensure the project, educational, professional, extracurricular, etc. sections contribute as much as possible to your candidacy.
Our first and best piece of advice for everyone: Take every part of the application seriously when it comes to the quality of your writing. Use proper grammar and consistent formatting, proofread repeatedly, and strive for elegant, concise expression throughout. If you fill out the non-essay sections (what we call the "front pages") in a way that appears slapdash, it will only detract from the hard work you've put into developing your project and are currently devoting to refining your essays.
Program Information section
Field of Study (Study/Research Applicants only)
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Make sure that the field of study chosen here matches what you list in your SOP and PS headers exactly.
Project Title (Study/Research Applicants only)
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Make sure that the project title listed here matches what you list in your SOP header exactly.
Abstract/Summary of Proposal; Host Country Engagement; Plans Upon Return to the U.S.
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Please see the separate guide to short answers on Canvas (ETA | SR) for advice on these mini-essays.
Affiliation
(Study/Research Applicants only)
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Study candidates: name the university where you plan to enroll and the region in which it's located.
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Research candidates: list only the person who is providing a letter of affiliation (or persons, if you are submitting more than one letter of affiliation) and their institutional affiliation. Others you plan to work with, but who are not providing a letter of affiliation, should be mentioned in the SOP but not listed here.
Academic Information
- If you have more than one degree to list, Fulbright asks you put your highest degree first.
- Don’t forget to include current GPAs wherever available.
Awards & Achievements
Please note: you only get 90 characters, including spaces, per entry.
General advice
- Include dates whenever relevant, and be as consistent as possible (month & year vs year, except for one-time items like for awards).
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The order across all entries, particularly those within a category, should be consistent. The date should be last. If you have multiple leadership roles to highlight, you can put the role first, followed by organization – for example, President, Students for Socio-Economic Success, 2016-2018. if you have fewer leadership/official roles to highlight, then the order can be the reverse (organization, then role). But be consistent.
- The punctuation and capitalization across all entries must be consistent, too – for example, when listing dates they should consistently be “2019-2021” or “(2019-2021).”
- Anyone not from JHU should be able to identify what type of activity you participated in or honor you received. If you need to explain what an activity or award is, parentheses are a good option.
Extracurricular/Community Engagement Activities
- If your role has a generic title, or the organization is not well known, describe what you did very briefly. If you simply say, “Head of Family, Thread,” someone unfamiliar with Thread will have no idea what that means.
Honors, Fellowships, Scholarships, Awards
- Dean’s list is an exception to the rule about giving context: it does not require further explanation. If you’ve been on the Dean’s list consistently, “all semesters” is better than listing specific years or semesters.
- For societies with Greek letters (except PBK), indicate what the society is – for example, Pi Delta Phi, National French Honor Society.
Publication, Exhibition, Performance, Presentations
- Use American punctuation style for citations. Put periods and commas before the closing quotation mark (e.g. “mark.” not “mark”.) and use double (“”), not single (‘’), quotation marks.
- Ensure that your role and the context is clear – presentation vs. publication, 1st author vs one of many, etc.
- You can substitute abbreviations and/or short descriptions for article/journal/conference titles that are too long to include. A brief summary is often more helpful to non-specialists anyway than a highly technical title or inscrutable acronym.
Professional Information
Employer Name (50 characters including spaces)
- This should be more specific than Johns Hopkins University – so, name a department, center, lab, institute, etc. It also should not be just your direct supervisor’s name. Provide as specific an institutional context as possible in the space allowed.
Job Title (50 characters including spaces) & Type of Work (30 characters including spaces)
- These two small entries are where you should try to describe your work as fully as you can. Make the function of the organization clear as well as your own role/contribution. Remember, anyone not from JHU should be able to understand what your work involved.
- Don't waste space by repeating across these two entries. If the job title is research assistant, for example, don't write that the type of work was research assistance, which is already clear - be more specific about what kind of research you perform(ed).
- Be mindful of verb tense: past tense for work that is finished, present tense for work that is ongoing.
Reminder: as with the extracurriculars section, don't assume knowledge of specific organizations, labs, or offices at JHU.
Experience Abroad
Host Country Experience
- If you have taken repeated trips to the proposed host country, be sure to contextualize them. Extended time in the country before high school is generally fine, but should be explained. Note things like study abroad or research trips.
Other Experience Abroad
- Re: “Additional Comments Regarding Experience Abroad”: For those who have traveled extensively, you can use this section as overflow for your experiences abroad list. For others who don’t need extra room to list experiences, this is an opportunity to say something about yourself, one a lot of applicants don’t take. You can note why you went somewhere, and connect that experience with the Fulbright ethos.
Language Self-Evaluation
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You can include in the self-evaluation any language that you have studied in a substantial way, even if it’s not spoken in the host country or related to your project. (Substantial means more than learning a few phrases on a short trip or dabbling via Duolingo).
- For languages that are relevant to your project or country, you will be asked to provide additional information in two text boxes. These provide opportunities to go into greater detail about the extent of your language learning to date, and what your plans are to learn more before and during the grant (you should say something here even if your language skills meet or exceed the standard - there is always room for growth). While these short answers are not essays, they still must demonstrate your writing skills, including writing in complete sentences in proper, polished prose.
Click on these Canvas links to see samples of completed front pages with comments: ETA | SR
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Application Checklist
A complete Fulbright application consists of many different parts. Please be sure you are working on the following to meet our 8/21 campus deadline:
--> Check in with your recommenders, ensuring they are aware of the upcoming campus deadline and have all the information from you that they need. (If you haven't registered them yet, do so ASAP!)
--> Confirm & register your language evaluator, if applicable.
--> Revise/polish your short answers, Statement of Grant Purpose and Personal Statement.
--> Fill out the front pages of your online application (see above).
--> Upload your transcript(s).
Questions about recommendations, language evaluations, transcripts, or the required format for your longer essays (Fulbright has very specific rules about this!)? Then read on...
Resources Roundup
We've anticipated and answered many questions about all parts of the application on Canvas, especially in our Guidelines and Non-Essay Application Materials sections, which are available to you 24/7.
You can also consult previous editions of this newsletter:
- Registering Your Recommenders ASAP
- Get Started on Your Short Answers (how they should differ from what's in the essays)
- Personal Statement vs Statement of Grant Purpose for ETA Applications
- Study/Research Applicants: Time to Get Started on Your Personal Statement
- Language Evaluations
- Personal Statement vs Statement of Grant Purpose for Study/Research Applications
- Key Resources - Statement of Grant Purpose & Personal Statement
- Selecting Recommenders
- Fulbright Affinity Groups
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The Scholars & Fellows Team
The National Fellowships Program (NFP) in Scholars & Fellows Programs (SFP) advises JHU students and recent graduates applying for nationally competitive fellowships, scholarships, and grants. You can find information about many awards, with detailed profiles for several, on our website.
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