Abroad Award
Term Length: 1 year
Needs Institutional Endorsement
US Citizenship Required

You are eligible to apply for a Fulbright if you:

• Are a U.S. citizen or in the process of becoming one at the time of application.
• Hold a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent by the beginning date of the grant.
• Have sufficient proficiency in the written and spoken language of the host country to carry out the proposed project/study. Each country indicates its specific linguistic requirements.
• Preferably have received most of your undergraduate education in the United States.
• Graduating seniors must participate in Northeastern’s Fulbright Fellowship process, which includes a mandatory interview.

The Fulbright Awards Program seeks candidates whose applications demonstrate their:

• Intellectual ability. There is no required GPA, but typically winning applicants will have a strong record of academic achievement relevant to their project proposal.
• Ambassadorial skills and cultural sensitivity.
• Knowledge of or desire to learn about the host country and to share what is best about American culture.
• Language skills and preparation.
• Personal suitability and adaptability to host country.
• Promise of advancing mutual understanding among nations.

At all stages of the review process, particular attention is given to the quality and feasibility of the proposed plan of study or research.

For an ETA, this means establishing your interest in the host country and your ability to share in cultural exchange, as well as to demonstrate what skills and experiences you have had as a teacher.

For a research/study grant, this means narrating your interest in your particular project, as well as in the host country. It also means being quite clear about your  research problem and why it is interesting to you, those in the field where you are working, and potentially the host country. Your application should clearly set out who you are as a researcher, what skills you possess, and how, when, where, and with whom you will be undertaking your work. It is critical that you make a case for why your research can most successfully be conducted in your host country.

Interested students should request an Applying for the Fulbright booklet, as well as Request for Reference forms from Undergraduate Research and Fellowships.

In order to apply to the Fulbright through Northeastern, you will need to submit the entire application by our internal deadline through Northeastern’s Internal Fellowship Portal. This internal deadline is earlier than the national deadline in order that the process be both evaluative and supportive. After you submit your initial application, it will be reviewed by a Northeastern University committee. A representative of the committee will interview you and at that time offer you advice about how your application might be improved. Typically these interviews occur in late September/early October.

Please complete the applications forms through the official Fulbright online application but do not submit them there. Instead, please print the file to PDF and submit a single PDF file of your application through Northeastern’s Internal Fellowship Portal for the internal deadline. You will collect your references for our internal deadline on our Northeastern Internal Fellowship Portal — please DO NOT register your references on the official Fulbright website. You will have the opportunity to revise your application based on feedback provided by the Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships between our internal deadline and the national one.

A complete Fulbright application will consist of:

• A complete application form.  There is a single application form for all Grants, both Research Grants and Teaching Assistantships, on the Fulbright site. The application becomes available when you register on the Fulbright site. The application will include a) a Statement of Grant Purpose, b) a Personal Statement, c) a Foreign Language Form (with the exception of programs in countries where English is one of the national languages — see country program summaries), d) an Official Northeastern University Transcript and any transcripts from other institutions you have attended, e) Letter of affiliation (with English translations where necessary).

• Any supplementary materials for candidates in the arts or creative writing.

• Three recommendations. Do not request letters online through the official Fulbright system. Once you register your referees on the online application, you will not be able to change your recommenders nor will your referees be able to make any changes to their letters for the national deadlines. For the grants, this means a cover form plus a traditional letter. For the ETA, your references will take the shape of a particular form to be filled out. In order to ensure that you receive letters of a uniformly high quality, please provide your referees with the Request for a Reference form available through Undergraduate Research and Fellowships. You will use the Northeastern Internal Fellowship Portal to solicit references on your behalf. After our review, you will then ask writers to upload their letters to the official Fulbright site.

• A mandatory interview with a member of Northeastern’s Fulbright committee to evaluate the applicant’s proposal and preparation as a representative of the United States abroad.

After submission of their material for the national deadline, candidates are notified of their status after a preliminary national screening in late January. The notice of final selection occurs in April or May.

Northeastern’s Internal Fellowship Portal