The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans Application Essay Tips
Paul Soros was often overshadowed by his younger brother, financial wizard George Soros, but he was a successful businessman and multi-millionaire in his own right. In contrast to George Soros’s success in the financial industry, Paul Soros made his mark on the world by innovating in the shipping industry, filing patents, and winning several engineering awards in everything from loading methods to shipping routes. Complementing Paul’s background, his wife Daisy Soros studied interior design and has been a lifelong supporter of the arts. Paul and Daisy Soros both immigrated from Hungary in the wake of World War II, so it is only fitting that the fellowship for graduate education that they founded supports young, first-generation Americans. The Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships provide half of the annual tuition (up to $10,000 per semester) plus a stipend of up to $25,000 to each of 30 Fellows each year.
In addition to age and immigration status requirements, the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans seek candidates who have demonstrated creativity, originality, and initiative; sustained drive and effort; and commitment to the values expressed in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Successful candidates will be able to show a future path of significant impact applying that creativity, originality and initiative – a path on which the graduate degree they are pursuing will help propel them.
This year’s Fellows include the youngest Muslim elected official in America, an American Medical Association emerging scholar in infectious diseases, a PhD student developing computational models integrating sound and sight, and a former Rhodes Scholar who led a statewide grassroots campaign for the civil rights of voters with low-incomes and/or with felony records.
In addition to the traditional application material (transcripts, standardized test scores, letters of recommendation (3 required, up to 5 accepted)), the PD Soros Fellowship application allows uploading of a resume, 2 essays, and optional exhibits – copies of your artwork or articles written about your work, for example. In addition, the application requires 3 letters of recommendation, with the option to submit up to 5 recommendations. The Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans is open now and due by 2 pm Eastern Time on Oct 27, 2022. Applicants may apply for the Fellowship as they work on their graduate school applications; there is no need to wait until you are accepted for graduate study.
PD Soros Fellowship application essay tips
PD Soros essay #1
Tell us about your experiences as a New American. Whether as an immigrant yourself, or as a child of immigrants, how have your experiences as a New American informed and shaped who you are and your accomplishments?
Feel free to discuss how individual people (such as family or teachers), institutions, aspects of law, culture, society or American governance made an impact on your life as an immigrant or child of immigrants. The program is interested in understanding the context of your personal, professional, and academic accomplishments. (Maximum length: 1000 words)
In guidance from the Fellowship committee, applicants are advised to use this space to share stories that provide a window into their world as a new American, and many Fellows find that talking with their parents about their childhood challenges and triumphs helped them illuminate the most salient lessons and experiences for this essay.
As immigrants and the children of immigrants, what opportunities and rights did you gain in the U.S. that you would not have enjoyed in your parents’ native country? How did that insight influence you? Alternatively, were you challenged by those differences and how did that challenge influence your direction, perspective, and actions? How did your life experiences affirm your commitment to the values expressed in the US Constitution and/or Bill of Rights?
Essays that share the depth of your feelings and not just your actions will resonate most intensely with the Fellowship committee.
PD Soros essay #2
Tell us about your current and near-term career-related activities and goals, as well as why you decided to pursue the specific graduate program(s) and school(s) that you have. How do you see your current work and study informing your early career goals? If you have not been accepted into a program yet, please tell us about why you selected the programs to which you are applying. (Maximum length: 1000 words)
This essay may be much less personal and possibly unrelated to your new American experience as you discuss your academic interests and ambitions. The thinking that you do for this essay will be helpful in writing your statement of purpose or goals essay for the master’s programs and vice versa. Often, it helps for applicants to write about the questions for which they are seeking answers, the tasks they would like to do well, and the missions they would like to contribute to. This discussion then provides an easy segue into how graduate study will prepare them for those roles. With 1000 words, you will also have plenty of room to add details about how you have pursued those answers thus far, providing an additional opportunity to demonstrate that you are a good fit with the PD Soros Fellowship’s search for creative, unique, driven, persistent, and committed new Americans.
The PD Soros Fellowship also offers an Optional Exhibits section, allowing you to upload additional material for further insight into your background or potential – for example, links to videos or performances, pieces from your portfolio, or published or submitted written works. While there is space to upload up to 5 optional Exhibits, these are considered supplementary to the application, and the admissions committee is not required to review all of them. Therefore, place the most compelling evidence of your talent and fit with the Fellowship first to capture their interest and, hopefully, encourage them to continue perusing that opus.
For expert guidance on your Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans application, check out Accepted’s Application Packages, which include advising, editing, interview coaching, and a resume edit for the PD Soros Fellowship application. Accepted’s clients received over $3.5 million dollars in scholarship offers in the last application cycle and would be glad to help you make your grad school dreams come true too.
PD Soros 2022-23 application deadline
The application for the 2023 Fellowship is due on October 27, 2022. The top 77 applicants for the 2023 cycle will be designated “finalists” and will be asked to appear for virtual interviews in late January and early February of 2023. The 30 2023 Fellowship winners, selected from among the 77 finalists, will be notified in March of 2023. They will begin to receive stipend and tuition support from the program in the fall of 2023.
Source: PD Soros website
***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with individual programs to verify the essay questions, instructions and deadlines.***
[xyz-ihs snippet=”GRAD—Catalog-of-Services”]
By Jennifer Bloom, admissions consultant at Accepted for 20 years and Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW). She is an expert at guiding you to produce application materials that truly differentiate you from the rest of the driven applicant pool. If you would like help with your application, Jennifer can suggest a number of options that work with any budget. Want Jennifer to help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!
Related Resources:
