zephyri

About 30 for Arabic

Made it for Arabic! E-mail says they will announce program site placement in a few days. All the dates for the institutes are online, except for Jordan, which is kind of wonky and says January 1-December 31st. Must be a loooong summer institute! Congrats to everyone who received positive news today! A friend of mine was an alternate for Arabic a couple of years ago, and did end up accepting an award. In my institute last time a few students there said they had been alternates.

Yeah that makes sense Maybe the end of this week at the earliest, but likely sometime next week. Unusual to be a month behind! I wonder if they've finished final selection for some languages, and are still waiting on others. That means some of our names could be sitting in a spreadsheet right now!

Another week it is! I suppose we've waited this long, what's another 6 days? I thought yesterday might be unlikely since they sent out those visa e-mails to some languages. They wouldn't have sent those to all semifinalists if they were almost ready with the final decisions I suppose. Did you all see the posts on facebook? Kind of surprised semifinalists would complain publically (ie with their real names) on fb about the delay before decisions have been sent out.

I applied for Arabic but didn't get an e-mail about a visa. Anyone else here doing Arabic? Did you get an e-mail yesterday like the others? I think the countries with the Arabic institutes (Morocco, Oman, Jordan) are also easy for Americans to get visas. When I was in Morocco, we got our passports stamped and that was it.

Four more working hours left in DC! Will today be the day?

Thanks for checking and letting us know! Holding out for next Friday, but I suppose we may have to wait until Monday the 29th- damn leap year!

True, they will want to give finalists three weeks to decide whether they're going to accept their scholarships. Hopefully this means we'll hear back this week, or next at the latest!

Thanks mrs12! I hope they will send the emails out today. I'm not in the US, but isn't it after closing time on the east coast? Maybe they work late! Good luck to you, and the other posters, and all our lurkers

Got the notification 2 mins ago! I'm a semi-finalist for Arabic! Did people from the other languages hear back yet?

Well, I'm betting today or tomorrow. Looked back at 2014, and we were notified on a Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon (right near closing time, like 4-5pm) in January and February. I think they send out the notifications in the afternoon to reduce the volume of calls they might receive. Though if they make announcements on a Thursday, they'll still get people calling on Friday. Just speculation though! Can't do much else while we wait

I agree it will be delayed- looking at the WPost page, the federal government will be closed today, and metro service limited. I would be very surprised if American Councils expected their staff to come in under those conditions. I also hope we'll find out by Friday!

Could today be the day we hear back? I'm hopeful, but when I did CLS in 2014 all of the notifications were on a Friday, if I remember correctly. Won't they come back from their long weekend, raring to give us some peace of mind?

For the 2014 institutes, the first notifications happened on January 15. The gradcafe threads for previous years of CLS make for entertaining reading

Morocco, what was yours?

Yes you have an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) which is a test they use to place you in your language level once you get to the country. The interview does not affect your scholarship at all. I had one year of Arabic when I went in 2014, and the interview was pretty nerve-wracking because I didn't know what to expect. You set up a time and they call you on the phone. They start with easy stuff like your name, where you're from, where you live/study etc. Then they try to push your language level by asking you to participate in "scenarios" that mimic everyday experiences- like for instance, you're at a restaurant, or you see a car accident- what do you do, or you're late to work and your boss is upset with you. I'm sure the scenarios get more complex as the language level increases. Basically they push you to the limit of your skills, which can be uncomfortable, but is their way of seeing what your maximum abilities are. You have the interview before and after the institute, to see how much progress you made.

I'm sure it varies depending on the country, but for the Arabic institutes, I know that it depends on the local US organization's (in this case AMIDEAST) relationship with the local language center. It seemed to me that the program evaluates countries based on security and the suitability of institutes for accommodating large groups of students. CLS asked us for evaluations of our center during and after the program, which I think play a role. They won't continue to use a local institute if they're not having good results (overall- including language acquisition, but also student well-being). I think the variability of security situations and also the fact that local language institutes are competing to host CLS cohorts, is most of the reason why institute locations change from year to year. Obviously these contracts take time to work out, and that's why we don't know the locations and dates of the institutes until after the selection process. Any insights from other past participants on other languages/locations?

They don't know for sure which level we'll place in, but in my Arabic institute in 2014 we had a good mix- enough students for 5-7 people at each level (advanced beginning, intermediate, and then there were three advanced classes). For languages with no prereqs, it's probably different. Arabic requires at least one year of study. Anyone from a non-pre-req language here who can attest to the mix in their CLS institute?

Does anyone know when the summer institute dates and locations will be posted?

I know the application deadline isn't until tomorrow, but I wanted to start a thread for all of us applicants. I attended last year (Arabic) and am applying to do a second round. I hope the selection schedule is the same as it was then- if so, we have less than two months until notifications for the 1st round!

Rejection is unfortunately the name of the game with fellowships. I applied for 9 fellowships this year and so far have been rejected by 6 of them. All you need is one 'yes' amongst all the 'no's.

Congrats cml471! I also got an acceptance at 12:37pm. Really excited!

Yes I'm hopeful that the e-mail reply I received this morning is correct- that there's hope we may hear as early as Thursday. Wouldn't that be amazing? Not to have another weekend of no news?

Weird, I guess we were communicating with different people at Boren.

Email reply from Boren said they might go out towards the end of this week, but could be next week as well. Either way, I think we'll know by next Wednesday.