ExFulbrighter

Hiall! Ithought it would be helpful to many if I posted my experiences with Fulbright.This is because while the advantages of Fulbright seem to be well known, itsdisadvantages are hardly communicated. At least in my case, however, the latterwere thus great that I finally decided to decline my Fulbright fellowship.Because it’s the disadvantages of Fulbright which are not well known, I focuson them here. I am talking about the foreign student grants in the amount ofabout 20’000$. (I have another account on this forum, but decided to post thisunder a new username to preserve my anonymity) Themost prominent disadvantage is, of course, the 2-year requirement. This obligesyou to spend 2 years in your home country (or the country you have studiedbefore going to the US) for 2 years before you can reenter the US on a visasuch as a H1. This means that you will not be able to work as an assistant profin the US after finishing your PhD. Theoretically, there is the possibilitythat this requirement gets waived, based on a "no objection"statement from your embassy. However, applications for such waivers based on a"no objection" statement are, according to the Fulbright people in mycountry, virtually never granted. The head of the Fulbright administration inmy country writes to me: "I have been involved with this program for morethan 12 years. I have neveragreed to or seen a waiver granted." There are other possibilities forobtaining a waiver which you can get if you would face exceptional hardships byreturning to your county. But -- these hardships need to be really hard! Forexample, getting married to an American and having a child with him/her doesnot seem to be sufficient reason. This information is given to me by aPhD-student who is currently in this situation: “I'm now at the stage where Iam thinking of getting married to my girlfriend - an American. Yet even if Igot married I can't get a green card or permission to work because of the2-year rule. Even if she gave a birth to a child, they would not waive it (I'vealready looked into this). Generally speaking it's really really hard to getrid of that requirement.” (It does seem possible to get a post-doc after thePhD, however, even if you’re subject to the two-year requirement) Butthere are other disadvantages of Fulbright: Ifyou receive a Fulbright, you will not handle your application yourself, but theInstitute of International Education (IIE) will do this for you. This may seemlike an avantage at first, but alas, it isn’t! The IIE seems to be severelyunderstaffed or just plainly incompetent. Examples: 1. The IIE will suggest youa list of universities to send you applications to. To a friend of mine theysuggested to send her application to a university which does not even offer thekind of degree she shought. The friend therefore asked the IIE to not send herapplication there. Nevertheless, she soon was called by said university toinform her that the degree she had applied for was not offered – the IIE hadstill sent her application there. 2. The IIE simply failed to inform me andthat friend about the outcomes of our applications. Only when I asked did theyforward the admission letters to me. (they were surprisingly quick withforwarding the rejection letters, however) For this reason I missed some flyoutdays. 3. The IIE entered faulty information in my applications: they mixed upsome numbers. This is just a hassle, and it took me some hours to find thatthis was the reason for why my computer account at the university did not work.4. The IIE does not allow you to interact with the universities directly. Ifyou want to send an email to a university, e.g., you need to send it to yourregional Fulbright contact, who forwards it to his/her contact person at theIIE, who forwards it to the person at the IIE who handles your application whoforwards it to the university. Ifyou accept a Fulbright, you will have to deal with other visa issues: Even ifyou do a 5-year PhD, the IIE will only issue visas with a duration of a singleyear. This means that practically each time you make holidays at home you willhave to go to the embassy to apply for a new visa! Also, some documents aretied to your visa, such as drivers licences, and if your visa expires, so dothese documents. In particular if you have a spouse who accompanies you on aJ2, if he/she applies for work permission, this will be tied to your visa.Thus, each year, he/she will have to apply for an extension – lots ofunnecessary paperwork. All of this is very inconvenient, and as the head of theFulbright program in my coutry writes to me: “Any Fulbright sponsorship willcontinue beyond your first year of study and cannot be transferred to auniversity at the end of your grant period as a matter of convenience.” (Here,Fulbright sponsorship does not mean that you will receive money but that youwill not get rid of the IIE and its red tape.) Inaddition, the advantages of Fulbright do not seem to be that great: Atmany universities, a Fulbright will simply substitute university funding, i.e.you will not be able to “keep” your Fulbright. (E.g. in my case, at all thosetop-10 universities to which I was admitted it would have been significantlyless than 5000 $). Thereputation effects on admission you get from Fulbright do not seem to be large:The large majority of Fulbrighters I met in my country (a little more than adozen) went to universities outside the top-20. An exception are the three orfour of them who got into Berkeley – which might be due to Berkeleys tightfinancial situation. A PhD student I’ve alrtteady cited above writes: “It's notNSF fellowship or anything like that...so once again if you take Fulbright forthe money, that's only logical if you need it. If you want to do it forprestige, it's idiotic.” Consequently,also the networking effects seem to be negligible: “sometimes people tell youthat you might meet other outstanding Fulbright people - i.e networking.Honestly, I didn't find the Fulbright students intellectually stimulating..alot of them are basically 1 year exchange students.” This is in line with myown experiences: Many Fulbright grantees do not aim for a career in academia oreven a PhD, which limits the benefits from networking with them. Ihave cited only two people above, but I had contact to many more Fulbrightersand Fulbright administrators, and unless you really need the money, from theirreplies, I can only second what the international student office at my (top5)university told me: “I REALIZE THAT THE FULBRIGHT IS A PRESTIGIOUS AWARD,BUT YOU ARE WISE TO CAREFULLY CONSIDER THE "PROS AND CONS."”, oreven, what a current Fulbrighter advises me to do: “STAY AWAY FROMFULBRIGHT!!!!”