batcathat

I thought for the EU fellowship, anyone is eligible regardless of citizenship as long you are hosted by an EU organization (e.g. https://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/actions/individual-fellowships_en). 
For a direct answer, I found this FAQ page: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/support/faqs/faq-890.html
I know of at least one American who was an EU Marie Curie fellow. I also know of others non-EU and non-US people that are Marie Curie fellows working in the EU. 
I think the fellowship where you are working outside of the EU may have more restrictions such as the list of countries Warelin mentioned. 

Hello and welcome!
I had that exact issue when I started -- I even reached out on here several times asking for samples of successful applications and no one replied. If you (or anyone reading this) are a social scientist, I'd be happy to share my application materials with you. 
I talked with my advisor about international scholars that he knew and where good work was being done in my field internationally. I also looked through the most recent editions of the international-scope journals in my field, found articles that piqued by interest, and looked at which schools the authors were affiliated with. Then "cold-emailed". After two rejected applications to Australia, I was informed that more STEM-focused fields prefer to work in countries that have English as the primary language and so would have a more competitive field of applicants, so I found researchers in another GROW country and applied there instead. 

The entire process is frustrating because NSF doesn't provide feedback on your applications. I had the NSF office at my university read through several drafts of my GROW essay and that seemed to help over time. 
Good luck! If you have any further questions, feel free to PM me

I changed dates last year - as long as your host and the NSF counterpart in country approve, NSF doesn't seem to mind any change in dates (or even splitting a single visit into two visits if needed)

I am working on doing the same thing right now. They basically told me to clear the new dates with my host and then let them (NSF GROW) know what these new dates are.

I also just heard back positively about my GRIP request. This will actually be the third year I've done GRIP. I think it's a great program! I also applied for GROW, for Sweden, but have not heard anything back yet. My advisor has been very supportive of this kind of thing. It's great for professional development, especially GRIP, because of the dearth of academic jobs it's really helpful to get experience and a network in your field outside of academia. 

Thanks for starting the thread! Congrats on your GRIP news, what type of internship is that? I applied for GROW in Australia for the summer, but haven't heard back yet. In the previous years, it seems like the notifications were delivered pretty late for this. My status is still "awaiting NSF approval" as of now. Getting a bit antsy since I was planning on heading over there in early June, if approved. I am only able to go for 3 months, over the summer, so hopefully I will hear back soon enough.

One thing that worries me about the professor is your earlier statement that the professor has been telling you for years that she wishes she hadn't gone straight to graduate school. I had a professor who literally stopped talking to me once I (politely and with support from other professors) declined to follow the path he had suggested! Professors aren't infalliable and some can fixtate on you not "making their mistakes," especially, in my experience, younger professors. 

Thank you soooo much! I feel so lost right now....when the time comes to make a decision, I'll spend a ton of time doing so.

Yes! I was absolutely MISERABLE my first year! My apartment sucked. My landlord sucked. I was broke. I hated the town I was living in. My program wasn't what I expected. My partner was a 10 hour car ride away. I had wonderful friends and I liked my professors, but everything else was pretty terrible.
Get help! There are support groups on campus that can help you find ways to make things better/easier to manage. Be open with your advisor (if you trust them) about what's going on with you. Try seeing a counselor. If you can talk it over with a counselor and they say you should move home, then go for it, but get their professional opinion first. The first year is by far the hardest I've been through, but it is so worth it! 
Good luck!!!

If you are applying to schools in the top 50—as judged by pretty much any ranking of prestige you choose, whether by the university overall or anthropology-specific—most of them should offer full funding. "Full funding" means "full tuition reimbursement and a stipend for your work." Nobody (who wants an academic career) should ever go to a US PhD that expects you to help pay tuition, or that does not offer a stipend. This is not unique to you, trust me! We are all looking for this, and if you get admitted to a top 50 program, it is likely that you will be "fully funded." Just glancing over one list of top 50 universities, there are only three that I know do not offer full funding to their entire admitted cohort. (Indiana at Bloomington, for example, does not fund all their admits, although it probably varies by department). That said, I don't know about the funding in about 20 of these universities, but there are about 27 of them that I do know fully fund all of their admitted students.
But! There is another, related issue, that I think may be the concern you're trying to express. "Fully funded" sometimes still doesn't provide very much stipend money; UNC pays like $12,500. (Although I will note that that is an exceptionally low stipend. They do also have opportunities to win university-wide fellowships that pay more.) When you say that you need full funding, do you mean that you can't go anywhere unless they offer a stipend over X thousand dollars, because you have living expenses that can't be met with less? That should be more or less easy to figure out from the university websites, or the various "grad school funding spreadsheets" floating around this website. If you need $16,000 to be happy and $18,000 in higher cost-of-living areas, you can certainly figure that out before you apply, and save yourself the application fees!
PS Please excuse the bolding and italics, I've been writing my NSF essays and their over-formatting bug has bitten me. (And good suggestion about the outside funding!)

From the responses, I can see why you're LOR writers think you need some time away from academia. You need to be able to think independently to succeed in grad school and not rely on someone else to spoon-feed you information.

Hi DC/'burbs people! Just wanted to give a little bit of advice on one area. I'm from Frederick, and I've seen a few people, just in browsing this thread, that have asked about it, so hopefully this will help people moving to the area and considering Frederick. It's a really great, growing town. I think many consider it a rural town/D.C. exurb, but it's definitely got its own personality. Downtown Frederick in particular is really awesome; very historic, super cute, great bars/restaurants/music, and good shopping. There's a local liberal arts college, Hood, so there's a bit of a college population, but the bulk of Downtown is comprised of young professionals and families. You can get a very nice apartment (like, even a 2 bedroom) for ~$1500/mo. And, like much of MoCo, Frederick has a lot of typical suburban sprawl with every chain you could ever wish for. The public schools are great. The city's blossomed within the last ten years and with the ever-encroaching Metro Area I expect it to get even better. So, I think it's a really viable option for someone who is commuting to D.C. or NoVA. Okay, there's my glowing review.

This application season ended for me mid-Jan, and I have sinced contemplated about how one would pick out just one school.  
I know very well that it is one of the most important decisions I will ever make. 
 
Before you read any further, let me tell you that I have done as much "homework" as I possibly can on picking schools (feel free to advise me on this): (1) school rankings, (2) department rankings, (3) research fit, (4) professors' research background / tenure (or not - how many years left) / publications etc, (5) Their placements (academia and industry), (6) fundings, (7) if they are taking new students, (8) cost of living, weather, quality of life at that area.
 
I thought I knew a lot.  And that has changed completely, in the last few days.
 
I (luckily) got my hands on this source of information which provides me with a much more complex picture of faculty connections, their personalities, their styles of working with students, and academic pedigrees that generally are not available to applicants.  Long story short, it involves a lot of luck, and I have learnt several things that I want to share:
 
1. An adcom picks out applicants based on these factors, in order of importance: (1) rec letters, (2) combination of GPA and GRE scores, (3) statement of purpose, (4) research experience.  Why, you ask?  Name recognition is very important in academia, and if your rec letters come from the big shots in your field, it makes your applications 10x better.  GPA+scores give a general idea of competence.  Your SOP tells them what kind of person you are; how much and how well you can talk about your research experience shows commitment and competence.  If and ONLY if your SOP matches with what were written in your rec letters, then you are in.  From what I heard, generally undergraduate students do not partake in very meaningful research, so adcoms see it as a preparation step of commitment and resilience, rather than looking at the quality of the research itself.
 
2. Keep an open mind:  Do not be obsessed with school rankings.  Be where you feel the most happy.  Be where you feel supported by faculty.  Be where department dynamics and lab dynamics are good. Generally, you have an idea of this during your visits, so do not make any decision before you visit all the schools you are accepted to.
 
3. The most important thing about picking a school, is that feeling like there is more than one person in the department you could be happy working with. Be robust to environmental fluctuations!  It is very possible that you dont end up working for that one person that you wanted to.  Only join a department that you like working for more than person.
 
And there is so much more.  As I come to realize how complex it is, I feel obliged to share what I have learnt.  Good luck with your decision!

Similarly, I told one of my guy friends I applied to U Mass- Amherst. His response?
"If you got in you'd have to go, cause that's where John Calipari [u Kentucky basketball coach] started coaching basketball at!"
 
Because obviously the most important criteria for choosing a program in anthropology is whether or not John Calipari used to coach there.
 
Sports people, I just don't understand them.

It has a very, very solid reputation in archaeology, at least according to my adviser. Actually he said that it is considered to be one of the best archaeology schools, and it extremely difficult to get into. Robert Preucel and Robert Schuyler are major names in archaeology, and there seem to be a number of other archaeologists on the faculty. Some major names in Archaeology today graduated from Penn. It might depend on your concentration and the state school. Are we talking about Berkeley and Michigan? In most cases, if Penn will fully fund you, yes it would definitely be worth it turn down the state school. 

Radiomars, another thing to keep in mind is networking. I've heard a number of my professors only half-jokingly say that more is accomplished at conferences in the hotel bar than in the papers themselves. In anthro especially, everything is about who you know and your network. If you have a fabulous network already in place at UCLA, it might be time to expand in a new direction. It'll be a challenge, yes, but moving to a new city always is. You'll always have your UCLA friends and your UCLA network. Have you visited Yale/met with your POI?
 
Congrats, by the way -- UCLA or Yale is an enviable predicament to be in!!