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Updated 11/5/09

CONTENTS
1. Overview
2. Language
3. Acquaintance
4. Nutshell
5. Research
6. Teaching
7. Resumes
8. Academics
9. Country
10. America
11. Funding
12. Life-Changing

1. OVERVIEW

BEFORE clicking on any link below, first just read this page all the way through so that you can orientate yourself to what’s in here and then decide, based on what you already know, where is best for you to begin to dig deeper.
To understand fellowships generally, read
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/overview.html
and links therefrom.

There is much in the above section, Introduction to the Program (program there meaning the whole Smith Fellowships Program), that applies to Fulbright preparation including pages such as
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/prep.html
and
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/attributes.html
which is important to act upon if you are serious.

If you dip into
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/two_steps.html
ignore the direction to Registration because Fast Track to Fulbright Candidacy has its own exclusive Fast Track Registration.
Do however check out
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/eligibility.html

2. LANGUAGE

There are two paths to preparing to apply for a Fulbright since these fellowships are of two types: the Research Fulbright and the Teaching Fulbright.
All Fulbrights are conducted in one of about 155 foreign countries, so a fair amount of knowledge of your potential host country and its language to at least a “hospitality” or "survival" level is expected of applicants with a few exceptions.

Mostly, though, especially for Research, a proficient, if not excellent, command of the language will be required.
All depends on each country’s requirements found via
http://us.fulbrightonline.org/program_regions_world.html
and on the level of language you will need to be able to conduct your proposed project.

So language stands out as your first preparation consideration, which means to learn at least some of the language of the country to which you will eventually apply.
But often early in your college career, you will not know where you will want to go or what you will want to do for a Fulbright.

It is during the course of your college career that you usually start finding out what really interests you and what you would like to pursue further, such as through a Fulbright.
And it is often the foreign language to which you are drawn to study that will end up dictating your country choice for a Fulbright.

So if you don't want to be so limited and do want to look and plan ahead (one of the attributes of successful people) then explore all avenues for learning a language, including at UMass for instance, which offers a great variety of choices.
Another, harder way is self-teaching with Rosetta Stone but even they do not offer all languages and seeking out a private tutor might be your only option.

3. ACQUAINTANCE

To understand much of what you will read here, it is necessary first to familiarize yourself with Fulbright basics.
These can be found at
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/fulbright_intro.html

The more you read, the more you will know.
Knowledge is power and action produces results.

Simply read through these files for an overview of the Fulbright but do not get bogged down in the detail because the program keeps changing.
What Smith classifies as “Research” Fulbrights include Study, such as for a degree, and other parts of projects that could include interning, volunteering or an apprenticeship (activities that could possibly also supplement a Teaching Fulbright).

The Fulbright has many facets and already, as you may have noticed, we are becoming side-tracked from Fulbright Preparations during your college years.
But how you prepare beyond country choice does really depend on whether you will be applying to do Research/Study or to Teach English.

4. NUTSHELL

For whatever you propose for your Fulbright, you must have the commensurate background skill.
If you want them to give you about $25,000 to spend a year in a foreign country doing something, you must show them you know how to do what you are proposing.

This means you know your subject and have some experience in it.
For Research, you know how to conduct research because you have performed research.
For Teaching, you have experience teaching, preferably in the classroom.

Research is the doing, but of what?
– The subject you have studied.

Teaching Fulbrights sometimes used to attract those who didn’t have a research project.
Not so anymore as Teaching and specifically Teaching English and more specifically Teaching ESL has become an equally specialized Fulbright.

Specialization for both Research/Study and for Teaching English (ESL) is key to winning a Fulbright.
You must become something of a junior expert in something to stand out in a highly competitive application pool.

To become that expert, you must focus or concentrate in a particular field.
This is where you follow your heart, your bliss so you spend plenty time doing what you love: what interests, fascinates and absorbs you.
 
It takes time building specialist expertise which is all the more reason to start planning in First Year if you can.
Often though, if you pursue your interests fully and with gusto, they will give you the background that qualifies you for a Fulbright.

Example: A sophomore decided she wanted to apply for a Teaching Fulbright to wherever she had the best chance of succeeding, but she lacked teaching experience.
For the summer before Junior year (when she would begin her Fulbright application) she got a job teaching English in Greece so she would have ESL experience.

She won a Fulbright to Korea.
Another student did something similar the summer following her junior year because she was too late in applying for funding to get overseas (see Funding below).

Nothing beats setting a goal and taking concrete steps to attain it.
Research shows that those liberal arts college graduates, who report the most enriching undergraduate experiences, are those who managed to integrate their academic and extracurricular pursuits into a theme that had a connecting thread running through it.

5. RESEARCH

There are many avenues to prepare yourself for a Research/Study Fulbright but none quite like actually doing research in your field or any research for that matter, simply for the experience of undertaking research.
Opportunities to do research abound at Smith but you have to seek them out to gain this major advantage towards eventually winning a major fellowship like the Fulbright.

How to find out about them?
Read eDigest religiously, follow faculty department news and seek out advice from professors, who are your best college resource.

Professors across campus have all sorts of research projects going on right here and all over the world.
They are always on the look-out for assistants.

All of the following count towards building background in your field:
Studies, courses, honors, thesis, special studies, Collaborations, research abroad, publications, Kahn, fellowships, papers, Blumberg, presentations, posters, internships, jobs, volunteering, and so on.

It boils down firstly to what you have studied and thus know in depth.
Then how have you worked with this knowledge, put it to some use to produce a tangible result.

Part of finding an idea for a research project and developing that into a project concept includes doing a literature review to see what research has already been done on your topic.
This will lead you to the names of those researchers anywhere in the world, whom you are at liberty to contact for advice, especially what fresh or neglected research angles are calling out to be investigated.

6. TEACHING

Nothing beats classroom teaching experience or the closest you can get to it such as tutoring small groups.
Unless you are an Education major and or have studied Early Childhood Development, the older the age group you teach or tutor the better because you will most likely apply to teach English in middle or high school, even teacher training colleges and universities and special language bureaus, depending on the country.

The other best experience is to teach or tutor ESL abroad either during a summer or while on study abroad junior year, even J-term.
Volunteering is usually the best means to gain teaching experience.

There are many teaching volunteer opportunities offered through Smith and others locally that you can arrange yourself.
Some of the places students teach/tutor are Head Start, People’s Institute, International Language Institute of Massachusetts, Center for New Americans, JFK Middle School, Northampton High School, German Gerena Elementary Montessori Magnet School in Springfield, Campus School.

For more information, contact:
Educational Outreach, Clark Hall, ext. 3060.
Community Service Office, Tilly Hall, ext. 2793.
Career Development Office, Drew Hall, ext. 2570.
International Language Institute of Massachusetts, www.ili.edu, 586-7569.
Center for New Americans, Northampton.

Besides teaching experience, TESL Certification is your best bet to winning a Teaching Fulbright, especially if coupled with ESL teaching experience.

Courses such as http://www.i-to-i.com/tefl/ are available online as distance learning and so can be done anywhere anytime (like now, the sooner the better).
The School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, Vermont offers TESOL certification courses.

The International Language Institute of Massachusetts
www.ili.edu
runs the four-week SIT diploma course in Northampton during June, August and J-term.

Certification courses are offered all over the world including at universities in the U.S. over summer.
Enroll now or ASAP in such a course for J-term or the summer.
Then get some experience under your belt to boost your bid.

7. RESUMES

Leadership is the key word here, but in its broadest sense that includes taking initiative in all sorts of endeavors that show organizational ability or service, preferably that somehow ties to your academic interests and ultimately to your Fulbright application.
And it goes one step farther: it is not just what you did that counts, but the outcomes from your efforts that make you stand out in a fellowships competition where most contenders have breath-taking resumes.

Broaden your vision through this website:
http://www.smith.edu/cwl/leadership.php

What is your "business card" self-description blurb going to say about you in eight words?
Factors that feed how you will sum yourself up in distinctive terms are:

● Know what’s going on globally.
Be informed. Form opinions.

● Your community starts here on campus and extends into the whole world.
Must get involved in activities beyond the classroom.

● Become committed to one or a few endeavors.
Don’t spread yourself too thin.

● A long list of diverse activities will not help.
Look for a focus, a coherency, a continuity that defines you.
And makes you stand out from the crowd.

● Membership on its own is not enough.
Go for leadership, initiative. Be enterprising.
Above all, achieve RESULTS, the fruit of effort.

● So how do you become a leader?
Through giving more than the next person.

● Volunteer to be the secretary or the treasurer of the group.
Performs tasks that make the group happen.

● Be the one who offers and helps to run things.
Who works for the group.

● Before you know it, you will be elected a leader.
Provided you put your name forward.

8. ACADEMICS

● High grades are helpful, even essential for some fellowships.
But it’s your intellectual development that’s more important.

● Extend yourself by going deep into one or two fields.

● Best way to do this: Use the most valuable resource on campus.
And that is your professors and other faculty members.

● Get to know them well enough so that they know who you are if someone asks. 
There are about 500 faculty members on campus.
This makes for a faculty student ratio of 1 to 5.

● With that kind of ratio, there’s no excuse not to and every reason indeed to . . .
Visit them in office, lab. Find a reason to discuss an interest.

● Your mind will be stimulated and it will grow.
This ties to your intellectual development which becomes the subject of your Personal Statement essay.

● Fellowship winners tell researchers, the single most important factor in their success, was the professors they got to know.

● Speaking of research, and this also ties back to resumes:
Conducting research projects before your senior year is a powerful plus in fellowship applications.

● Collaborate with a professor, or do your own through the Kahn Institute, or independently with guidance from a professor, come up with an idea to investigate your interests more deeply.

● A fact of fellowships is that the letters of recommendation professors write count for a lot.
So however excellent you may be, strong letters can make the difference between winning a fellowship or not.
Or getting into a good grad school, or landing a plum job.

● I have seen highly promising candidates fall down because they had not made the effort to engage faculty beyond the classroom.
So there was a lack of professors who knew the candidate well enough to write strong letters.

9. COUNTRY

Host country knowledge is highly prized.
You must do your homework about the host country, so you don’t propose activities obviously ridiculous to any local and so be laughed out of court.

Get a sense of the geography by studying country and city maps found online, in atlases or elsewhere.
Orientate yourself in the space of the place.

They want to feel you care about their country by saying things that show you have made a study of it, which includes not only academic subjects such as their history, but also some practicalities of life there.
We want to reassure through what we write that we are not caught up in an insular myopic American mindset out of touch with the different realities of living in other countries.

For cultural sensitivity to be sincere, it translates into understanding what others confront and must contend with in their daily lives.
So much is relative to our own experience and thus circumscribed perspectives.

10. AMERICA

Your experience in &/or knowledge of America is the content of many conversational English classes you will teach abroad and, even for Research or any Fulbright, you are expected to know your own country that you will be representing as a student ambassador.
 
You must be able to talk about America, so you must be knowledgeable enough about your own country to be able to speak about its geography, history, politics, culture, peoples, economics, religion, arts, sciences &/or current events, etc.

You need to take some courses or do some reading if you are short on such knowledge.
You need to be up on current affairs internationally as well because many questions will be put to you about this in relation to America domestically and its role in the world.

11. FUNDING

Smith has several sources of funding for overseas experiences such as spending a summer in Greece teaching English, taking an ESL certification course in Mexico say, or learning a foreign language.
Be sure to apply before the deadlines, most of which are early to mid-spring!

There are a whole host of links to money at
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/sponsored_intro.html
including chiefly
http://www.smith.edu/studyabroad/ieg.php

Others of note are
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/sponsored_gov_dept.html
and
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/sponsored_mideast_lang.html
and
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/sponsored_nflp.html

Otherwise, check out the multiple possibilities at
http://www.smith.edu/fellowships/independent_intro.html
under for instance Abroad, Language and Summer.

Check out Smith Student Aid Society and maybe Funding for Smith Undergraduates at
http://www.smith.edu/classdeans/funding.php

12. LIFE-CHANGING

Working on a Fulbright application is a life-changing experience, students report.
It is probably not like anything you have done before, starting with Preparations today.

There's a huge amount of hard work involved but the benefits derived and the satisfaction gained from completing an application make it all worthwhile.

Want to break the ice?
Get into the groove?

After all, what's this all about?
Basically writing to someone to give you some money to go do something interesting and important in a foreign country, right?

So think about it this way: You have this rich aunt rolling in money, who also happens to be an English teacher, so appreciates eloquence.
She's got a soft spot for you but is kind of strict, has high standards, and a searing intellect.

But you know how to charm her, you have a way with her.
Write her a letter telling her what you want to go do abroad for a year.

If you get Aunt Hilder excited about it, and convinced it's realistic, doable, you know what might happen next.
She may well offer to pay for the year.

Some students find this approach an ideal ice-breaker.
The feeling of familiarity of writing a personal letter to a friend cuts through this icy iceberg that you might fear looming before you.