raymondnorth

Just to follow up on an earlier post of mine where I suggested decision emails were likely to be sent out on a Friday... While that may be true for other fellowships, it's definitely not the case for Ford. To keep my mind occupied amidst all the other stuff going on, I went through the past several years of the "Dissertation Fellowships" wiki—this year's is here: https://academicjobs.wikia.org/wiki/Dissertation_Fellowships_2020-2021. Here's the breakdown of when awards were announced in previous years. These are for the dissertation fellowship, but I think (?) all emails are sent on the same day: 3/15/2019 (Friday) 3/28/2018 (Wednesday) 3/22/2017 (Wednesday) 3/29/2016 (Tuesday) 3/27/2015 (Friday) It'll be any day now, and that's exciting—just trying to remind myself that whether it's one day or the next matters little in the grand scheme of things. Best wishes to everyone!

Not to fan the flames of obsessive email refreshing, but... Last year it appears decisions were sent out on March 15th (the third Friday in March), so it's possible that decisions could go out this week (closer to the 15th) or next week (the third Friday of the month). It does seem that many of these grant decision emails go out on Fridays. In the meantime, I was just poking around on the Ford Foundation website, and it seems that there's a new link ("Review Result") which wasn't there the last time I checked. When you click on it, it says "Review results will be available one to two weeks after the review"–as a post above pointed out, the scheduled review of applications seems to have happened last Thursday/Friday, so decisions being communicated this week or next would make sense in light of this as well.

Heooooooo, felicidades! Enjoy Venezuela!

So, so sorry miri1776. I know the mantra we tell ourselves is so often "these things happen for a reason," but sometimes they don't, and it's often healthier to not try to rationalize every single thing but simply find a way to cope for now and be stronger in the future. I know I sort of fell into this meaning-making way of thinking last week when I got the NS for Colombia while on a campus visit to my graduate program at Indiana and found myself saying that it was serendipity that I had had such a pleasant time there. I think it had a lot to do with some other things I was trying to cope with - just a few days before that a friend passed away completely unexpectedly from a random infection that started with an innocuous cough, and the next day I was driving 11 hours to her memorial service. To try to make meaning out of these things would be silly, but a week and a half later I feel like I have a ton more perspective, my priorities are clearer, and my future more certain. Anyways, I just wanted to let you know that I too was rooting for you, and will continue to do so for 2015-16. I'm gonna back off from Fulbright for a few years while I get my feet set at Indiana, but I should be ready to go back to the drawing boards for 2016-17. Best wishes, stay strong everyone.

Congratulations and very much deserved, @mozartgirl53!!! It's your turn now, @miri1776

Hey all, I was just in Bloomington this past Sunday through yesterday, and it was absolutely gorgeous weather for a first visit. I also received notice Monday evening that I was not awarded the Fulbright grant I was waiting for, so I am now officially and eagerly enrolled at IU for this Fall. @RicardoBello - We will have to meet up sometime in Bloomington - if I can't go to Colombia, then I'll know at least one Colombian in Indiana. @guinevere29 - Thanks for the heads up! I sent you a PM because I am currently (as of about 36 hours ago) looking frantically for 1br places.

Just found out I was not selected for the Fulbright ETA to Colombia. To all my fellow applicants, I am very sincerely rooting so hard for all of you. It may very well be fate - I have been in Bloomington, Indiana for the past few days visiting my future home for graduate study, and I've fallen in love with the campus and the faculty and students in my department. I can't deny the fact that I'm heartbroken by the fact that I won't be spending the next year in a country that's captivated my mind for a long time and that I've completely obsessed over for at least the past 10 months, but I will absolutely find another way to travel and do my research there in the future. So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Colombia applicants: I got the below email from Paola Morales this afternoon - just FYI, the context for her emailing me was that I sent her an email two weeks ago on Friday 4/11 just asking for any general information about where on the timeline the selection process was going since at that time I thought I would need to make my grad school funding decision by Tuesday the 15th. As it turns out, she was out of the office all week last week (I should've known as it was semana santa) and I got an auto-reply, and sort of tried to forget about it since I was given more time to decide by my grad director. At any rate, the good news is below: Dear Eliot, Thank you for your e-mail. We have made a decision. However, following the protocols IIE is in charge to notify the status of selection. Once they do so, I will contact the selected candidates. I'm waiting for IIE permission to contact the selected candidates. I hope it is today. Best regards, Paola Morales So yeah, there's that. I don't want to spark up a firestorm (although I know this info already has my excitement/anxiety levels up a few notches), but I did want to share the information. That being said, as we all know very well by now, it's in IIE's hands at this point to do the notifying, and the country committees have no inside knowledge about when that will happen, BUT at least we know that in Colombia's case it looks like the ball is in the State Dept.'s court. Good luck everyone, the time is nigh! EDIT: Sorry, it may not have been clear that Paola Morales is on the Fulbright Colombia committee, and I decided to email her because she is listed somewhere as the Program Manager for the ETA program and was one of the people that I interviewed with.

Thanks for calling @alfred92. I can't say I'm that surprised that we're still not getting any clear idea of when it'll be, but I'm relieved at least knowing that I can wait to find out before I make my plans for next year. We Latin America applicants need our own little support group.

I'm actually going to hold off for now - I got good news from my graduate director this morning that they're going to let me hold on to my funding offer until I hear back from Fulbright. My main reason for calling today was the April 15th deadline tomorrow for accepting my graduate fellowship, but since that's no longer a concern, I am going to sit tight and wait. Best wishes to everybody still waiting.

Brazil actually has a different Program Manager (Jody Dudderar) than the rest of the Western Hemisphere. I'm waiting for Colombia as well and would be immensely grateful if you wanted to call our PM Susan Muendl - I emailed her a few weeks ago and that was the source of the "mid-April" info. I was actually thinking about calling today as well, so if you can't do it let me know, and I'll make a point of trying to do it sometime this afternoon when I can get away from my desk (and boss) at work. Anyways, here's the contact info (from http://us.fulbrightonline.org/countries/selectedregion/18): Susan Muendl 212-984-5366 smuendl@iie.org

I'm right there with all of y'all still waiting this week, meditating a bit on that first part of the serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. I have an April 15th deadline to decide on a graduate fellowship for next year, and while up until maybe last week I didn't think I'd need to make that decision without knowing my final Fulbright status, it now looks like a real possibility. While it would mean I'd miss out on a great, albeit still hypothetical opportunity, I'm in no place to complain about where this has all taken me. The Fulbright application process is actually what led me to realize that it was time to go back to school for my PhD, and now that's an actuality. It's encouraging to see that most of those that weren't selected for their Fulbright grants this time around are planning to apply again in the future - I'll definitely be doing the same if this week doesn't bring the news I've been waiting for. That being said, have faith everyone, our work here is done. Your move, Fulbright committees of Latin America/Asia/Africa/Eurasia.

Small world. @kechemukwa - Saw your name pop up yesterday on the board I most frequently check. Sorry to see you didn't get the Fulbright, but it looks like you've got a pretty good setup for now anyway. Where in Germany are you? @RicardoBello - Are you living in Bogotá now? I applied for a Fulbright English teaching assistantship in Colombia, which is where I'll be next year if I'm accepted.

Hey kechemukwa, I'll be visiting Bloomington at the end of the month. I'm committed to Indiana for Hispanic Linguistics, but may be deferring for a year if awarded a Fulbright assistantship. How about you?

Yeah, it looks like someone may have gotten a little out of hand again with the editing/updating - just a heads up that I am going to revert it back to the earliest version that is not completely out of whack. I'll let y'all know what the time on that version is in case anyone has entered new information since then, they will need to re-enter it. Edit: OK, everything should be back to normal. The time of the last revision that contained the correct notifications for 13/14 as well as Laos' information was yesterday, April 1 at 1:23 PM. If you've added anything since then, please add it again, thanks!

Not sure about everyone else, but I emailed the IIE Program Manager for my region. You can look your PM up on Fulbright's website by choosing your region under the "Countries" tab, then scroll below the map and list of country names - it's sort of hidden unless you know you can scroll down. In terms of the content of the email, I would try to keep it rather short and to the point, but just to the extent of: "I am coming up on deadlines for the 2014-15 school year, and I would appreciate any information as to when Fulbright will be making its final decisions for X-country." Before writing be sure to search this thread for your country and make sure no one has already written to the PM and asked the same thing. It may also be useful to keep a tally of who has been contacted and for what countries. Off the top of my head, we have heard from: Panama - "not finalized" Colombia - "mid-April" Brazil - "soon" Germany - "unable to predict" / "much of a waiting game" Mexico - "by April 11th, the latest" As you can see, the information is always going to be rather ambiguous, and you can't fault the PMs for that because they probably have little if any more information than we do.

Also check out UW-Madison and University of Arizona's PhD programs in Second Language Acquisition. Rutgers' Spanish and Portuguese Dept. has a separate PhD track for Bilingualism and SLA as well. I'm not enrolled in any of them, but can attest that they are all wonderful! Attended conferences put on by the first two and have interacted quite a bit with the faculty and students at Rutgers. Happy hunting!

Hey lalakey, just wanted to chime in really quickly here, since I can absolutely relate to your situation. I am similarly situated in that I was accepted to a graduate program with a funding offer that fits my needs, and I also thought that I would have heard back from my country by now (Colombia issued their notifications on 3/7 and 3/16 the past two years). That being said, while your graduate program is pressuring you, you can absolutely put that decision off until April 15. Some schools are a lot more aggressive about trying to solidify decisions prior to April 15, but most graduate schools have signed a resolution (see http://www.cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGS_Resolution.pdf) stating that students are under no obligation to make a decision on a funding offer prior to April 15. From what I heard back from my Program Manager as well as some of the other people who have spoken to their representatives, it looks like Fulbright is doing their best to make decisions prior to April 15 so as to not unnecessarily burden people trying to make these decisions. I am as on edge as anyone in this state of life-limbo, but lately I'm trying to accept and be grateful for each of these opportunities, and to realize that as much as I've invested in this pursuit, Fulbright doesn't owe me anything. If I receive this award, it will be just that, a reward/prize/proverbial-icing-on-my-academic-cake, and I know I'll be more appreciative of the opportunity if I keep this mindset. I really hope you get it- you've been here since page 1 of this forum, and while I wasn't in the mix last year, I know you were, and I can only imagine the resolve it takes to do it again. If I'm not successful this time around, I'll have learned from you and those others that applied a second time that it's worth the effort, and will definitely do it again in a few years when I'm focusing on my dissertation.

Congratulations! Did you apply for ETA or Full Research?

Yea, I noticed this as well. There's also a note at the bottom that someone apparently has deleted anyone's information if it was not in the correct alphabetical order (I'm guessing they meant alphabetical in terms of country names). Which is baffling because now some of the countries are inexplicably mixed up (UK on either side of Venezuela and Vietnam, for instance). I also don't see any info on people who were accepted, though maybe that's just been filtered or something. This isn't the first time this has happened. There have been a few occasions where whole columns and/or hundreds of rows have been removed, and while I think sometimes it's fine and makes it easier to navigate (for instance, removing the Name and Username columns), I also think that before you remove any information you should bring it up here on the forum first.

Aight, well, to all those concerned I just got this response from IIE's Western Hemisphere coordinator: Final selections for the Fulbright ETA program in Colombia are still pending. Decisions are likely to be announced in mid-April. Thank you for your patience. Looks like I better pack it up for now, see you all in a few weeks.

Heads up to all the Colombia ETA folks, I just wrote an email to our program manager (Susan Muendl). Stand by for updates.

If you do, I'm sure I don't have to say this but- pretty please report back. I noticed that Brazil has its own program manager (http://us.fulbrightonline.org/countries/selectedregion/18 - scroll down for contact info) so if you're unable to get any details it may be useful to check with the other Western Hemisphere person, and I'll be happy to do that. South America definitely seemed to be more on its game last year than this time, both Colombia and Brazil (and Peru, but I don't know if any of those folks are here with us) are lagging a few weeks behind from the 2013-14 application season. So it goes. In the meantime I'll be playing this song on repeat for all of us out there still waiting... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBs3rtyf_sY

Thanks miri, this is really interesting. The updated Western Hemisphere table seems to suggest that Central America and the Caribbean decisions are still pending, but then where are all of these South American acceptances? The ETA table http://us.fulbrightonline.org/eta-program-charts) has been updated as well, but only in that they have different geographical categories - Asia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa - from the Study/Research grants now. No numbers for total applicants and the # of grants 2014-15 column seems to be the same as the projected awards from earlier in the application season.

Hey NuclearFlea, just to reflect sirskipsalot's sound advice above, you definitely shouldn't worry about coming across as arrogant. It seems to be pretty standard practice for students to ask to defer for a year based on being selected for a Fulbright grant. I'd go ahead and let your professor know this was why you hadn't responded to his message right away a few weeks ago, and that you hope to have a final answer on or around date based on previous notice dates for your country. I'm just going to copy below part of my message to the graduate director at my eventual PhD department. Just FYI, before you email the professor you may want to just check to see if there are any published guidelines on deferral for your particular department - for mine there weren't. Also, it sounds like this particular professor made you the funding offer, so it would seem appropriate to email him directly with your question, but I know that for my schools all of the communication about accepting/deferring/etc has been done through the graduate director. The prof might not have the final say in the decision, and if you can figure out who does that may save him the trouble of figuring it out for you. At any rate, my top school was not only amenable to deferral, but also really encouraged me to take the opportunity should it arise as it would only improve my academic portfolio. "_______________ is my top choice for graduate study, but I am still weighing my options for next year while awaiting notification from a few final programs. One of these programs is the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship grant to Colombia for the 2014-2015 school year, for which I was named a finalist in late January. In previous years Fulbright Colombia has issued final notifications between mid-March and early April, and as such I hope to have a definite answer from them before making a final decision about enrollment for Fall 2014. While this is not an issue right now as I have not yet been selected, I wanted to consult with you in advance with regards to the possibility of deferring my admission to pursue this opportunity. The Fulbright ETA program's scope is in line with my research interests, and would offer an opportunity to do field research in Colombia prior to entrance into a graduate program. If I am accepted, I am wondering whether the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese would consider allowing me to defer admission to the Fall of 2015 so that I could accept the Fulbright ETA." I should also make clear that I sent a similar message to another school that had made me a comparable funding offer, and they said they would not allow me to defer. I think funding is always a big question mark because of how the budgeting works (sometimes they simply can't guarantee the same funding is available from one year to the next). The program that said yes to deferral also said they would offer me the same AI-ship funding even if I were to decide to wait a year- then a week ago they offered a separate fellowship that would only be available for a Fall 2014 start date. Oof, sometimes I feel like I'm bargaining without even really meaning to due to this long wait for Fulbright, but I definitely won't complain about having more and better options than I did when this whole thing started. Best of luck to everyone this week, may it be a deluge of final decisions