by Steven Tagle
Five Lessons Learned from Winning a Fulbright Grant
In the final year of my MFA program at UMass Amherst, I spent significant time applying for fellowships, residencies, and funding opportunities that would enable me to continue my creative writing. At the top of my list was a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant, which funds American citizens to study, conduct research, or teach English abroad for nine to 12 months. I applied for a creative writing research grant to study Greek mythology in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece.
Every week, I carried out a diverse range of tasks to push my application toward completion. I met with a Greek tutor in Athens for biweekly language lessons. I watched Greek movies, read Greek poems and novels. I widened my circle of Greek contacts and reached out to former Fulbright grant recipients in Greece. I drafted and redrafted my Statement of Grant Purpose. The summer before the deadline, I took my first trip to Greece to decide where I wanted to be based and to meet with my institutional affiliation.
All of that preparatory work in the year leading up to the Fulbright deadline helped me become the candidate qualified to win the grant. At the same time, drafting and revising my Fulbright essays and responses to short-answer questions was a process of self-discovery that helped me better understand my motivations for applying, what I could contribute to my host institution and to Greece, and how the grant would help me take the next step in my career.
Applying for the Fulbright was a challenging yet fulfilling process that taught me as much about myself as about grant writing, giving me a sense of confidence and control over the process. Here are five of the most important takeaways from that experience:
1. Each piece of the application should contribute to a cohesive story.
Even though the Fulbright application consists of many parts, documents, and bits of information, those pieces must be composed in a way that together, they tell a cohesive story. Every written component from the statement of purpose to the short-answer question responses should contribute to an application that can hook a reader into your project. So make sure that every paragraph contributes to a compelling story and supports an overarching theme.
Your driving theme or concept should be clearly ascertainable in every aspect of your project. After I had written a few drafts of my statement and short-answer question responses, I sat down and reflected on the journey that had brought me to that moment. I asked myself, “What connects the dots here?” I identified the overarching theme of the “malleability” of Greek myths – how myths have been continually retold and reinterpreted throughout history depending on the teller and audience. This malleability gave me permission to reinterpret the myths myself.
Once I realized this theme could tie together all of the experiences and goals I was expressing in my application materials, I rewrote all my drafts to strengthen and illuminate that driving concept. As a result, the way I told my story, narrated my personal experiences, and presented by skill sets and future goals lined up directly with the overarching themes that I hoped to address through my research. The decision to compose my final drafts with the “malleability of myths” in mind was not contrived. It was a completely genuine construction that I discovered through the writing process.
2. If you’re in school or recently graduated, take advantage of the campus deadline.
Like many large or national grant organizations, including the Stanford Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program; the Marshall, Mitchell, and Rhodes Scholarships; and the Churchill Scholarship, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program allows candidates to apply through a preliminary process hosted by their alma mater or current university.
In these cases, universities establish internal committees to review candidates’ applications before the national deadline. These committees usually interview the applicants, provide feedback on initial essay drafts, and write an institutional endorsement (an additional letter of recommendation) for each student who goes through the process. To accommodate the time needed for internal review and give students a chance to revise their applications, campus submission deadlines usually fall at least one or two months before national deadlines.
Many students choose not to go through the on-campus process because they find the early deadlines intimidating, but I treated UMass Amherst’s campus deadline as an important benchmark on the way to my final draft. I used the additional time created by the campus deadline as a built-in review period, continuing to develop my materials while UMass reviewed my application. By the time I received my campus advisers’ feedback, I had near-final drafts of my materials ready to submit for the national deadline.
If you are currently enrolled at a U.S. college or university, or were recently enrolled, I recommend applying through that institution, because Fulbright advisers can provide you with additional guidance and application support. Again, campus deadlines are usually several weeks ahead of the national deadline to give advisors a chance to review your application before you submit. Search for a Fulbright program adviser here and get in touch with them.
3. Think strategically about your project location.
I chose to split my fellowship between Athens and Thessaloniki so I could volunteer with an organization supporting migrants and refugees in Athens, teach a semester of creative writing at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and see more of the country. There are many different ways to justify your primary location. But regardless of why you propose a specific base, your application materials should offer a clear and logical explanation for why you need to carry out your project in the location you identify.
Here’s a rule of thumb: the less common the destination, the more likely it is that you will be considered a competitive candidate. Large cities that serve as international hubs are usually the most sought-after locations, so unless your project is entirely dependent on one of your host country’s megacities, you might want to consider less-frequented states, regions, and provincial capitals.
4. Engage with potential institutional affiliations early as you develop your project.
Don’t wait until you’ve “figured it all out” to reach out to potential collaborators. Your statement of purpose will likely be much stronger if you build it based on dialogues you’ve had with contacts in the host country. You build this relationship by first establishing meaningful contacts.
Be proactive and research potential contacts before you reach out. Pick an aspect of your project that you are more or less certain about, like a destination, community organization, or topic of study. Then do some focused research to see whether other individuals or institutions care about or preserve resources that are related to your key themes.
Once you’ve identified a few contacts, write each of them a personalized email that includes a brief description of yourself, your expertise, and the goals you think you would like to accomplish in collaboration with these individuals or institutions. Plan on reaching out to five to ten potential contacts, because it’s likely that not everyone will respond. Once you’ve established a meaningful dialogue with potential collaborators, you can request an official Letter of Affiliation.
5. Paint a comprehensive and consistent picture of yourself.
Here are the three most important aspects of yourself that you must convey in your application materials, primarily in your statement of grant purpose and short-answer questions:
- You are an individual with a clear sense of direction, and you are able to articulate meaningful relationships between your short- and long-term goals.
- You are an individual who brings expertise, enthusiasm, and skills that will enable you to achieve the specific goals that you set out in your Statement of Grant Purpose.
- You are confident. Displaying confidence and self-knowledge in your written materials is not “cocky” or “rude.” Instead, confident writing shows the reader that you are capable of confronting unpredictable challenges and completing a project. Sometimes what you think is most obvious about your strengths and motivations just needs to be put into words.
Inspiring Confidence in the Future
When I show my successful Fulbright materials to students who are preparing their own large grant applications, they often express feelings of intimidation. “Well, you obviously knew what you were doing!” they exclaim. “There’s no way I’m ready to explain my project to the committee.”
I usually chuckle in response to these remarks because I have felt the exact same way about every grant I’ve ever written: I’m so not ready. That’s the amazing thing about proposal writing – your job as the candidate is to imagine the best possible outcome and explain how you would get there if given the opportunity to move forward with your project.
It takes many drafts, but when you get to the final round of edits, you can let go of your self-doubt and simply own the project and all its potential. As you explore your options, engage in dialogue with potential collaborators, and seek out letters of reference, just remember that you’re building toward a final draft, piece by piece. Take it from me: only when you’ve put in the work, polished your materials for the last time, and pressed “submit” will you be able to stand back and say to yourself, “Yes, it really looks like I know what I’m doing.”
A Stanford graduate and the recipient of prestigious fellowships from the Fulbright Program and the Institute of Current World Affairs, as well as a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, Steven has taught and mentored students for 20 years. As a published writer, journalist, and former speechwriter for the U.S. ambassador to Greece, he knows how to draw out applicants’ unique stories and craft compelling personal statements that help their applications stand out from the pack. Click here to get in touch.
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