ellevine

What makes you feel it'll be so soon? I'm a Spain applicant too (Research), so I'm wondering if I missed something that could give me hope for hearing sooner than I expected (April). Best of luck!

OK so I have what feels like a huge problem: I just found out today that someone else from my school is a semifinalist to the same country, also likely in the same field. Creative proposals already are underfunded, so finding out that I'm up against another designer is making me lose my mind. I have no idea what his proposal is about, but does anyone have any sort of idea how bad this truly is for my chances? Has anyone ever heard of two students from the same school getting funding in similar (if not the exact same) field in one year? ::throws head into hands and sobs:: Any insight would be relieving, to say the least!

Hi @imagata, I'm a Spain Research semi-finalist too! First off- I'm wondering where on the fulbright.es site you found this? After doing a little searching, these seem to be predominantly diplomatic figures (e.g. Minister of Higher Education)...I'm not sure how knowledgeable they'd be in evaluating our proposals. That being said, perhaps they don't need to be qualified as such; the American NSCs are so thorough perhaps they do most of the legwork so that these political committees in-country can simply choose what seems most aligned with their agenda and goals. Just speculating, of course.

OK, I know this may sound insane to get into this level of scrutiny (typical Fulbrighter behavior, I'm told)...but what do we think it means if you received your semi-finalist acceptance email on the earlier end rather than the later end (6:00 vs 6:30pm EST)? Given that this year rejections were sent out first, I'm concerned the earlier recommendations might be scored lower by the NSC than the later ones. What do you all think? I know this is absurd, and that I should just wait to find out until March when notifications typically go out, but I'm going nuts wanting the whole process to simply be decided!

Me too! What's your project about/where are you headed?

Honestly, the letdown of the notification not arriving last week has me already "mourning" as if I didn't get it. I'm hoping that feeling will either prepare me for the heartbreak, or heighten the surprise in the event I get recommended ::fingers crossed::

Ugh yes, I've definitely told more people about the Fulbright than I probably should have to protect my ego from a potential bruising. I keep wavering between "no way I'll be a semi-finalist" and obsessing over statistics to "wait, I have a great proposal, I should hold out hope!" Right now I'm in the former camp mentally. Anyone else feel like their confidence is all over the map? Fingers crossed we both make it to Spain!

That sounds fascinating! Good luck!

Hi all, Like most of you, I'm going mad waiting for news, especially given the government shutdown. I applied for a Research grant to Spain. I only see 2 others in the spreadsheet in that category...where y'all at? I'd love to hear from you what your proposals are about! A second question - anyone know where we can find updated statistics on the number of grants from the past year? The Fulbright website's most recent data is from the 2016-7 cycle. Best of luck to all, and hang in there!