While helping graduate students develop grant proposals for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, I’ve noticed a tendency among humanities and social sciences students to overemphasize the intellectual value of their work. Repeatedly, I found myself suggesting that they cut back their “why does this matter?” sections and add more information about how they will accomplish their goals.

To help my students, I reflected on what I’d learned from successfully applying for a Fulbright study/research award in Greece in 2015. One of my key realizations from that process is that the Statement of Grant Purpose is primarily a practical document, rather than a theoretical one. The point of the Statement of Grant Purpose is to explain how you plan to achieve your goals and develop answers to your research questions. As Fulbright’s guidelines indicate, your proposal should focus on the “Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of what you are proposing for your grant.”

If you’re currently applying for a Fulbright, this post can help you outline and draft your proposal. The deadline to apply for the 2026-2027 competition is Tuesday, October 7, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

What a Practical Document Seeks to Answer

Large grant organizations such as the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Government, which administers the Fulbright Program,  grants, and Boren Awards, all provide graduate funding that can support yearlong international research projects. But the statements of purpose these grant applications require are often written in a different style from the scholarly writing most graduate students are used to. They shouldn’t be approached in the same way as research proposals, prospectuses, or graduate school application materials. They advance a different kind of argument. 

In most cases, members of Fulbright application review committees are not experts in your field, but rather teachers, diplomats, and professionals with some knowledge of the country you’re applying to study in. (One exception to this rule are samples submitted by creative and performing arts applicants, which are reviewed by specialists in the candidates’ fields.) So in general, you do not need to provide an in-depth intellectual justification for your scholarship, and you should avoid field-specific jargon. 

Committee members want you to convince them of the following:

1. You are capable of justifying the overarching value of a yearlong international project to a variety of audiences.
2. The project you propose is feasible, intellectually compelling, and impactful.
3. You have the necessary qualifications, experience, and skills to accomplish the project goals you’ve set for yourself.
4. You demonstrate the capacity to establish your own collaborative relationships and support networks while abroad.
5. You will engage with communities in the host country and serve as an unofficial ambassador, promoting cross-cultural exchange and mutual understanding.

Preparing to Write Your Statement of Grant Purpose

When I applied for a Fulbright, I wrote several drafts of my statement over a period of three to four months the summer before the deadline. But long before I put pen to paper, in January of 2015, I began preparing for the application: carefully reading the award descriptions on Greece’s program summary page, reading articles and listening to podcasts about the country, studying Greek language and literature, and reaching out to contacts with some connection to Greece. By the time I started drafting my proposal, I had refined my project and felt a strong connection to the country. This preliminary research was the necessary bridge I had to build between myself and Greece to be able to write a successful proposal. The problem then was how to fit everything I wanted to say into a two-page, single-spaced document (6,000 characters, including spaces and punctuation)!

Here are the primary lessons I learned through the process: 

1. Your proposal isn’t (shouldn’t be) set in stone: it should change as your project develops, as you learn more about the host country and refine your ideas for how, where, and with whom to conduct your research. My statement served multiple purposes as I composed it. At first, it was a summary paragraph that I sent to potential host institutions and future collaborators in Greece. After talking about my project with potential advisors, my Statement of Grant Purpose evolved dramatically.
2. It’s okay if you haven’t figured out everything about your statement when you reach out to potential collaborators. In fact, many aspects of my project were still not pinned down when I started sharing my materials with individuals and institutions. Even though I wasn’t sure what my driving question was, or whether I wanted to be based in Athens or Thessaloniki, I put together a document that stated my expertise, experience, and desire to rewrite Greek myths, and that’s what I sent out.
3. Many people contributed to the development of my proposal: professors at UMass Amherst, Greek-American writers, locals I met during a summer visit to Greece, and former Fulbright recipients. Writing the proposal created a community that became my foundation of support when I arrived in Greece.
4. Even after you’ve submitted your application, continue to think of your proposal as a living document. Often, once you’ve been selected and arrive in your host country a year later, you’ll find that conditions aren’t exactly as you imagined at home when you were drafting the statement. Keep an open mind, be flexible, and let your proposal guide you but not restrict you.

Analysis of My Proposal – Paragraph by Paragraph

Country: Greece

Field: Creative Writing

Project Title: Rewriting Mythological Monsters to Investigate Greek Youth Culture

• Introductory paragraph with the basic details about my project, including what I proposed to do, for how long, and where in Greece. I also shared my goal, which was the writing project I ultimately hoped to publish based on my field work in Greece. I designed my proposal to address two of the encouraged research areas on Greece’s program summary page at the time: art/literature and modern Greek studies. 
• A paragraph about the significance of my project and the plight of young Greeks, based on my understanding of the country, which in 2015, was in the midst of a devastating financial and refugee crisis. I made a preliminary trip to Greece in the summer of 2015 to meet with my institutional affiliation and get a better sense of the country, and I was able to reference Greek current events and details from my trip in this paragraph.  
• Next, I discussed the impact of Greek mythology on Western thought and literature and the plastic nature of myth. Since antiquity, myths have changed depending on the audience and local customs.
• After introducing my interest in Greek youth and Greek mythology, this paragraph showed how my project would combine the two, how rewriting Greek myths and particularly reframing Greek monsters into the world of contemporary Greece could speak to youth who are wracked by the pain of becoming. Monsters are human projections of the unknown and feared “other,” and fear was rampant during the financial crisis.
• Then I referenced a few of my recent achievements, including my Soros Fellowship, discussing how parts of my identity have historically been considered “monstrous” and how my writing sample attempts to rewrite the myth of Narcissus and Echo. 
• On the second page of my statement, I shared my institutional affiliation with the Department of American Literature and Culture at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and discussed how a former Fulbright Visiting Scholar would serve as my mentor, as well as what resources the university would provide to help me with my project.
• Over the next two paragraphs, I broke down my nine-month grant term into three-month periods and explained how I planned to use my time in each period. For the first three months, I would travel to places in Greece that were the settings of myth and collect photographic, aural, and written data. Over the next three months, I planned to draft eight to ten stories in English and interview Greek university students about their lives. In the final three months, I would revise the stories with my mentor’s feedback.
• Then, I shared ways I could give back to the local community while in Greece. My institutional affiliation and I agreed that I would teach a creative writing workshop at the university, and I was also interested in giving lectures, hosting readings, and collaborating with Greek writers. I discussed my experience teaching creative writing to undergraduates at UMass and the work I’d done for a literary magazine focusing on a sense of place. I also talked about my plans after the fellowship: how I anticipated publishing my stories to spark greater dialogue between Greece and the United States.
• In my closing paragraph, I returned to the subject of monsters and how they loomed large in periods of crisis, like the one Greece was going through at the time. I expressed my hope that the myths I was rewriting could honor the trials and sacrifices of Greece’s young people and connect with other young people around the world who faced similar uncertainties.

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 Tagle 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.

Related Resources

• How to Prepare for a Fulbright Application
• Five Fellowships That Let You Research or Study Abroad
• Free Graduate School Guides