kmac11

I get what you're saying but I don't see any problems with having more personal reasons for choosing a country. It doesn't mean you're any less focused on the teaching. I'm not really expecting to travel much during grant (although a little would be nice) which is part of why I wanted to pick a country I'd do well in. For what it's worth, after talking it over with my Fulbright advisor I decided to go with Bulgaria after all.

You could check out the Presidential Management Fellowship STEM track. More info here: http://www.pmf.gov/the-opportunity/pmf-stem.aspx There are actually a couple of Geneticist postings with the EPA at the moment, so there will probably be similar things next year.

Okay, I know I commented a few days ago and I was very confident then, but I am now having doubts about my country choice. Which is bad because it's August and I really should be settled on this by now. Initially, I was interested in Greece or Montenegro because the ETAs in both of those countries do a lot of educational advising and extracurricular activities, which is something I'm really interested in. I'm a librarian and my experience is more in mentoring and educational advising than formal classroom teaching. The Greece program even involves working in the school library. Those two programs also emphasize being an ambassador and I plan to go into a foreign service career, so that experience would be very helpful. However, I decided I didn't have a chance at those programs. Montenegro requires university teaching experience, so I'm not really qualified. Greece has less requirements but is more competitive, 99 applications last year and only 12 grants. It does say that "teaching or counseling experience will be favored" although it doesn't specify that it needs to be classroom teaching. Additionally, Greece has required advanced language proficiency in the past. I don't know why they changed it to none required this year but I wonder if they still do prefer applicants with language proficiency. AND Greece has a "preferred" age limit of 26, and I'm 25 now. Everything seems to count against me here. Anyway tl;dr I ended up deciding on Bulgaria instead because it has a 50% success rate and not much in the way of required or "preferred" stuff. My Fulbright advisor agreed with me. I'm still kind of uncertain though. The Greece program just seems to fit me better, and I've wanted to live in western Europe or the Mediterranean region for a long time. Maybe I should stop being so self-critical... But I really don't want to spend almost a year of my life waiting and anxious, knowing that I have a very slim chance of actually getting the program. My life has already been on hold for about a year while job searching and I'd hate to waste another. (I'm also applying to Presidential Management Fellowship jobs with no success right now). Sorry this is so long...any advice appreciated!

Hey everyone! I found last year's Fulbright applicant forum through a Google search and it seemed like a great support network, so I thought I would join in for this year. I'm applying for an ETA in Bulgaria. I graduated a year ago, but since I got a job in my college town I still live here and I'll be able to apply through the university. Which is good because I feel like without the support I would be too daunted by everything to apply. I have a Master's degree in Library Science with lots of experience mentoring and working with students one on one, but no formal classroom experience. I hope that doesn't put me as a disadvantage in my application, but I'm trying to address it in my statement. And I'm planning to suggest volunteering in the library as my side project.