graceaco

Applying at-large is not a disadvantage in the sense that reviewers will not value one over the other when looking at completed applications. However, applying through your university is an advantage because your university will help make your application better. The interview and early deadline are designed to help you strengthen your application, and provide a sort of "practice" interview and "practice" application submission/review. The committee at your school will be knowledgeable about the review process and will give you feedback and ask you similar questions to ones that may be asked later on in the process (if your country does skype interviews). Applying at-large means you will be missing out on extra valuable feedback. If you are worried about being rushed I would still recommend applying through your university because after your on-campus review you will be allowed to re-open and make changes to your application through IIE before your final submission. They don't always make this clear because they want to scare you into being as prepared as possible before you submit to your university (their comments will be most useful if you have edited everything to your best ability already) but the university deadline is NOT your final submission.

Me too!! Congrats!!

On the Fulbright website under "Post US Student Application Review" (https://us.fulbrightonline.org/country-review-resources) it says "By March 2, 2018: In addition to entering Country Decisions in Embark, Posts and Commissions must email both the IIE Regional Portfolio Manage and ECA Branch Offices with the Country Decision list (including Principal, Alternates, and Non-Selects)." To me that means that the beginning of March is when the countries have to send IIE their choices and after that IIE has time to review them. Probably we won't find out the decisions until much later.

I'm worried it might be later this year because they have more info to go over with the questionnaire. When I emailed with a question about what time the questionnaire was due, though, they mentioned that they were going to start reviewing on Monday (1/22). If they're that on top of things that might indicate they'll be done reviewing early-ish.

Yes! I had no reason to be worried

Good point. I sent mine in midday on Sunday so it makes sense they would respond to you first. I think I am just needlessly finding more things to be worried about...

Ahhh that doesn't reassure me at all. I sent an email asking them to confirm if they got my questionnaire and they haven't responded (admittedly I sent it after the end of the business day there ~1pm CST).

Any other Czech semi-finalists get a confirmation that their questionnaire was received? It's probably stupid but I'm paranoid my email didn't go through for whatever reason

I haven't finished mine yet and am also having a lot of difficulty with the five sentence limit, especially since they state most of them should be only about two sentences (that seems nearly impossible). How are you supposed to keep a five step lesson plan to a five sentence total length?! I hope these answers will only help them get to know us better and give us a good fit rather than hurt, but it's still somewhat nerve-wracking sending them more material to scrutinize.

Congrats (I hope)! I am excited but also nervous about the whole thing. I had no idea we would be asked to add more to our applications at this stage. Perfecting the answers to these questions in a few short days is a lot of pressure.

Anyone else applying to an ETA in the Czech Republic get an email from the Czech Fulbright commission asking to fill out an additional country specific questionnaire? I got an email addressed "dear semi-finalist"... Not sure this means I am a semi-finalist and the Czech commission has decided to send emails out before the US lets us know. Very confusing but I would assume this means the countries already know who has moved forward, so everyone else (hopefully) should know soon too!!