Ruluo

Heh, that information isn't exactly searchable...and as I understand it, the committee isn't that big and there's no reason to suspect that there is a great diversity of opinion on it (imagine forming a committee of professors in the US hah). Take my intel as second-degree knowledge (I don't have direct communication with any of the committee members), but apparently the selection, while potentially life-changing for us, is fairly low priority for the committee members--at least that's how it was conveyed to me...

I'm actually less concerned about my background not being strong enough in general and more concerned with random exogenous factors. As an example, one of my affiliation letters is from a prominent politician, and I know that at least one of the members of the selection committee is on the other side of the political spectrum--add to that my project would be looking at policy that is moderately polarizing... Granted, my proposal is intentionally neutral (and the topic isn't so controversial that it would be a non-starter), so there probably wouldn't be any of those spurious issues where someone decides they just don't like it. That said, that's probably more of my primary concern...

I'm surprised how many people seem to be applying for the second or third time; considering a year is such a long time, it seems easy to get tied up in other commitments and not be able to apply for a second or third time... Anyone have any idea what the approximate rate is of returning vs. new applicants?

I just downloaded the duolingo app, and it's actually pretty cool (especially considering it's free...); that said, I did the most advanced shortcut (to bypass all the lower levels), and it was still way too easy. I wish they had the same exercises but with much more advanced words and sentence constructions/verb conjugations...

Hm, that's interesting; I wonder if that means that IIE gets to make the determination instead of the host country (that's what it sounds like...)

Omg... I was in an important business meeting and opened up my email while I was thinking about the Fulbright and saw one with the subject "Your..." (even though that's not supposedly what the IIE email is, but the january emails were), and I got lightheaded immediately... Turns out it was just about my retirement benefits account -.-

Wow, I'm surprised they even gave you that level of specificity, that they basically have the results and are trying to get them out, no?

Not to be creepy, but there were probably 80 people on this forum (including non-posters) that were like, "Germany ETA found out?? I hope theresanappforthat got it!"--that was my first thought at least hah...

Seconded...though maybe that just means we've had relatively easy lives heh...

Why do I have a feeling it's going to get a lot lonelier around here once the Germany ETAs get notification...?

Whoa, that's what I've been thinking and have articulated to my parents (which are the only people that know I've applied...); I'm in a good spot career-wise, but a lot of the stress comes from the fact that the Fulbright opportunity would set me down a completely different path--at least for the next few years...

My FPA said about 1/3...not sure if it varies from country to country, but I was fairly surprised that it's that high

Good show! I saw it on Broadway in January before it closed...

Whoa, that was in SimCity 2000...is that the version you're talking about???