lurker25145

Another long time lurker, first time poster.. I too am waiting to hear back about my full grant! Since I currently work for the government (but not the Dept of State) I have an inside look into "govt. procedures". Recently (yesterday), the Dept of State came out with their new Executive Budget Summary which can be found here: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/207305.pdf On page 34, it outlines how much the Fulbright program spent in Federal Fiscal Year 2012 (FFY12, and for those who don't know the Federal Fiscal Year begins Oct 1st and Ends Sept 30 in any given year), it says how much is budgeted for FFY13 based on the annualized continuing resolution calculation for FY 2013 (P.L. 112-175), and it shows the FFY14 request. Believe it or not, the funding for the Fulbright program is actually going up! And, they are asking for an additional $2,070,000 for FFY14 (Yet, this includes not only us applying for the US Student Program, but also the Scholars programs and the Foreign Student/Scholar programs too). Although I have no inside expertise into the workings of IIE, the Fulbright Program or the Dept. of State, I know (based on my work with federal grants and budgets) that once a budget is finalized it is often compiled with other budgets, and then again with even more budgets to eventually be approved and signed. However if something is wrong with one of those many budgets, they will ALL be put on hold (as we have seen with the Federal Budget in the news headlines) until the issue is resolved. What does this mean? Perhaps the Sequestration is holding up finalization of the Fulbright budget, or perhaps we are just waiting for other countries to finalize their budgets and decide, and we shouldn't freak out (yet). Either way, this lil' bit of research has helped me pass my morning without constantly refreshing my email!