Eternal Icicle

The. Best. Answer.

My school conducted interviews before forwarding our applications, and I know that based on our interview + application we were ranked on a scale of A-D before being forwarded to Fulbright. Don't know if Fulbright adjusts these rankings based on their own criteria or not before sending on to host countries...

It is an example. Being a manager does not exempt one from administrative work, as I am 100% sure any manager in an office would tell you. People have corresponded with their program managers and posted about it earlier in this thread-- all evidence points to their plates being full. It is part of their job to correspond with us, it is NOT their job to cater to our near-neurotic need for information overload. If you do get a hold of them, I'm sure you'll hear the vague "in the near future" or "sometime in April (or May or June)" that other people have gotten. Sound advice. Clearly this wait is driving us to the brink.

It is certainly part of their job, but not all of it. Like college admissions officers, if they have to spend all their time answering the phone for applicants, they'll never get the notification email drafted and sent... No, this process has not been transparent, but when you are cooperating with hundreds of agencies and people across the globe, transparency just doesn't occur. Things will happen when they happen. We knew from the get go it would be a long wait with little information. Also, THIS Janet Echelman's Ted Talk on "Taking Imagination Seriously," a tale of a Fulbright grant gone gracefully awry.

Calling these people will not, in fact, make notifications come any sooner. If anything, it will delay them, because they will be spending time with people on the phone instead of working. Or maybe they'll just withhold notifications out of spite (what I would do!).

Oh man. I really wanted to get to Romania last year for the International Romani Art Festival, which is usually held in Timisoara. I guess this year it's moving to Bucharest, though: http://www.iraf.ro/ If I'm in the Balkans in 2013, you bet I'll be there.

My boyfriend tells me I need to chill about this whole refreshing my inbox business. ... and then I told him about that regression analysis. He's glad I keep such crazy company.

I am also not a graduate student, but I've had some undergrad coursework relevant to the region. Bulgaria both doubled the number of ETAs and added more preferences after I had chosen Bulgaria for my application. From what I've heard in the past, Bulgaria had difficulty filling their ETA quota when they had only 8-9 spots, and often reached out to alternates of other countries. So, they can prefer whomever they want... it still doesn't change the fact that very few people can even put Bulgaria on the map. I am surprised by the number of Bulgaria applicants on this forum, though!

I'm feeling Austria, France, Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Bulgaria (but I swore this past week was going to be Bulgaria's week...)

I've been looking into this, too. Most PhD programs I've seen require a Masters from the beginning, but as a previous poster mentioned, there are ways to earn tuition remission. While I initially started out looking at Int'l Ed, I switched my focus to Higher Ed. Admin. Within HEA programs, there seems to be a lot of flexibility for earning-- you might teach/TA, but internships are often available in other areas on campus. Plus, many HEA programs allow you to specify an area of interest, like international education. So that may be something for you to look into. Until very recently, SIT Graduate Institute partnered with Peace Corps Masters International to offer an MA in Intl Ed, but it looks like they've cut that program in favor of other Master's Intl degrees... bummer. NYU looks like it has a great program, too.

My dad was in Dubai during the last election cycle, and the day Obama was elected, everyone he spoke too (at which point it becomes abundantly clear he's American) got SO excited and SO congratulatory over the election. It's entirely possible that those who weren't just didn't voice their opinions, but from the way he tells it, that day and the days after everyone had an opinion on the election, and it was entirely positive.

Since it's an election year, have any other ETAs thought "how am I going to explain, if Santorum becomes president?" Not to make this political, I just cannot imagine standing in front of a room of maybe high schoolers, but also having to face colleagues, strangers, etc, and have to explain how that could happen. Especially since many people around the world tend to love Obama... I guess I mean that I CAN imagine it, and I WOULD be diplomatic. It would just be hard.

The stipend info for other Bulgaria ETAs can be found here: http://www.fulbright.bg/en/p-English-Teaching-Assistants-40/ It looks like it works out to about $14000 over the 10-month time frame? Rick Steves did a Bulgaria episode back in 2000, and at that time one of the interviewers said 1k a month was sufficient for a family of four. I'm sure the cost of living has increased over the course of the last decade, but from Fulbrighter blogs it sounds like it is more than enough to keep their belly's full and their apartments warm! Still hoping our notifications come this week!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

*sigh* So begins another week of obsessively checking my email.

So true. I am, in fact, having a heart attack right now... *collapses* On the other hand, March 10th is the earliest it seems other rounds have heard back from Bulgaria... Fingers crossed that this is my week!

If my credibility was being lambasted, I'd probably stick around, too.

T Pain is clearly not a troll. After he posted his acceptance here, I checked in with the Belgium finalist on my campus and she had been notified, too.

I'm originally from Oregon and living in Claremont-- $1500-$200 is what you should expect for a three bedroom. Closer into Los Angeles studios go for $1000 and one-bedrooms for ~$1800, so thank goodness Claremont is removed from all that! In addition to housing, gas prices tend to be much higher here. It's between $4.30-4.40 here right now (and always tends to be about $0.30 higher than where I'm from in Oregon). Food and whatnot is comparable and the area has a number of options. Vons (Safeway) and Trader Joes are within walking distance, while other stores like Sprouts (organic/healthy/great produce) and Target are just a bit farther. It is a really great area! An oasis in the horrid cement desert of Los Angeles (but as an Oregonian I was born to hate Southern California).

Checking this thread/my email/my campus mailbox has turned into an unhealthy, life-disrupting compulsion. It's becoming more and more difficult to concentrate on the things I should (and need) to be doing in order to graduate, because I have all this anxiety about what I'll be doing after. I'm generally a level-headed person, but I'm a J-type (in Myer's-Briggs terms) and really need a plan! I can't handle the fact that my planner/calendar is utterly blank from mid-May forward. Needless to say, I might actually have a heart attack when Fulbright notifications arrive.

Those both sound like awesome Medieval History projects!

@boxoatoc-- the advice I continue to receive from pretty much every adult mentor at my school is the same: Say yes, and if something else comes along (like Fulbright) and then you can turn the first job down if you'd rather take the second offer. It's not the intuitively "nice" thing to do, but anyone who has had the job of hiring people knows that attrition happens. It's your life/career, so your number one priority needs to be making sure you have something lined up that you'd be happy to do. Leave it to them to figure out replacements/alternates if you are awarded the Fulbright in the next two months and change your plans.

That sounds great! A capella is one of the most popular activities at my school. I want to do some travel writing starting with the correspondence course offered by Matador U, and hopefully ending in some published articles/expanding the amount of lit about Bulgaria in the first place. I'd also like to join or create a knitting circle. lol.

Los Angeles rent is a huge killer on the budget, depending on the neighborhood you're looking at. The benefits of a car= you live further out and spend less on rent. But then you eat up gas killing hours a week in traffic and suddenly it doesn't seem worth it... I agree with mandarin that the "high cost" of LA is greatly exaggerated in some respects (food here doesn't cost dramatically different), but rent prices are not exaggerated. Think $1800 for a studio apartment if you're looking for a neighborhood where everyone does not have bars on their windows. $1500 for a studio is the rent controlled "affordable housing" price in those kinds of areas. But whole neighborhoods around UCLA are student apartments and those can be affordable when split with roommates.

Just curious what other ETA applicants suggested they would do in their free time/as side projects while they were abroad?