Critical Language Scholarship Summer 2019 Applicants

[APasq]

On 2/1/2019 at 11:03 AM, Ari21 said:

i applied for Intermediate Persian, but never received my decision and am kinda worried (expecting the worst by this point, though).
 does anyone have any suggestions for what I should do?

So as of Friday you have not heard back about whether or not you are a semi-finalist? If that is the case, I would say you should email (really I would call) someone at CLS and ask because they should have sent that out to you around January 16th when most applicants received notifications. Unlike other programs, I believe CLS sends out all of its acceptances and rejections for every country roughly around the same time-frame, so they must have missed your name somehow. Technically, that may not be a bad thing because you could still be accepted. Do you have an email confirmation that you submitted it because you can also send that to them to show you applied.

The only other thing I would say is to check your email (particularly your spam mail) to see whether or not you actually received a notification and it just was lost in your mail. I am so bad at cleaning my inbox so that happens to me so often. Also, if you put down multiple emails, like the application required us to do, maybe you may want to run through them again. I would do that once and if you still don't see anything, I would just call them. You should definitely have heard back from them about your semi-finalist status by this point. 

[lactosedoesntlie]

Hey, y'all. I'm a semi-finalist for Advanced Arabic! Congrats to everyone else who has made it this far. I created an account--like the others--just to reply to this thread. 

The finalist notifications are typically sent later in the month than were semi-finalist notifications in January, right (so I've heard)? 

 

[_KITE]

Semi-finalist for Advanced Japanese here. Hope everyone is doing well.

Found this article:

https://www.okayama-u.ac.jp/tp/news/news_id8283.html
 

It confirms that the 2019 site will be Okayama University, which is the first time a National University has been selected as the CLS study site. It also confirms that there will be 26 students in the Japanese cohort in total.
 

Moreover, I found a list of rankings for national universities in Japan. Shanghai Ranking ranks Okayama University just below Keio and a few spaces above Waseda.

http://www.shanghairanking.com/World-University-Rankings-2018/Japan.html

[Relly]

On 2/5/2019 at 9:50 AM, lactosedoesntlie said:

The finalist notifications are typically sent later in the month than were semi-finalist notifications in January, right (so I've heard)? 

From what I have gleaned in past thread and the facebook group, final notifications come out the first week of March. Could be the last few days of February, though!

[FriendlyNeighborhoodWolf]

A little late to post this, but I'm excited to say I am a semifinalist for beginner Korean. I suppose just a couple of weeks until we hear back?

[Relly]

So out of an effort to calm my nerves, I went through some past GradCafe threads to find the dates of the finalist and alternate announcements and calculated how many days went by between semi-finalist announcements and finalist announcements. Here is what I found:

2018: Mar. 1 (44 days)

2017: Mar. 7 (48 days)

2016: Mar. 8 (39 days -- recall that the semi-finalist announcement was delayed this year due to weather)

2015: Feb. 26 (44 days)

2014: Feb. 23 (38 days)

2010: Feb. 15 (36 days)

[nichinichisou]

2 hours ago, Relly said:

So out of an effort to calm my nerves, I went through some past GradCafe threads to find the dates of the finalist and alternate announcements and calculated how many days went by between semi-finalist announcements and finalist announcements. Here is what I found:

2018: Mar. 1 (44 days)

2017: Mar. 7 (48 days)

2016: Mar. 8 (39 days -- recall that the semi-finalist announcement was delayed this year due to weather)

2015: Feb. 26 (44 days)

2014: Feb. 23 (38 days)

2010: Feb. 15 (36 days)

Bless your heart for doing this!!

Looks like we'd have to be very lucky to get an announcement any time next week... March it is!

[APasq]

23 hours ago, Relly said:

So out of an effort to calm my nerves, I went through some past GradCafe threads to find the dates of the finalist and alternate announcements and calculated how many days went by between semi-finalist announcements and finalist announcements. Here is what I found:

2018: Mar. 1 (44 days)

2017: Mar. 7 (48 days)

2016: Mar. 8 (39 days -- recall that the semi-finalist announcement was delayed this year due to weather)

2015: Feb. 26 (44 days)

2014: Feb. 23 (38 days)

2010: Feb. 15 (36 days)

Well we received notice on January 16th so If I counted correctly, it looks like next Friday would fall within some of those time-frames (44 days counting weekends. Not sure if you counted the weekends when you did the numbers). In that case, it looks like we may actually find out by the end of next week or the beginning of the following week at the latest.

[sab333]

I've been thinking we'll find out either this Thursday or Friday (which would be the closest in time frame and date to last year's notifications), but I'm not sure if I'd rather know now or if it's better to keep the hope up for a little while longer. If anyone has tips for how to stop obsessing about it & think of something else, I'd love to know...

[aspyindisguise]

Soo if the website is down for maintenance tonight do you think we could hear back soon?

[_KITE]

I think the results will p come out sometime this week. I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be this Friday but who knows. It could just as well be next week.

Anyways, let's all hope for the best.

I'm hoping that every person in this thread gets a favorable outcome.

[blue_sugar]

Don't know if anyone would have experience with this, but suppose I have a security clearance from interning with a government agency and plan to, after the summer, continue being employed in that arena so that my clearance will still be used. Would I be able to participate in CLS during the summer without jeopardizing my clearance?

[sab333]

2 hours ago, aspyindisguise said:

Soo if the website is down for maintenance tonight do you think we could hear back soon?

I'm reallllly hoping that's the case. Has anyone tried logging in to their account? It let me log in yesterday and see my application, but today the same link brings me to a different page that says "Application closed" and I can't log in anymore. I'm not sure if that's just because the application is closed (but it was also closed yesterday and it let me log in?) or if I should be worried.

[aseolyoung]

38 minutes ago, blue_sugar said:

Don't know if anyone would have experience with this, but suppose I have a security clearance from interning with a government agency and plan to, after the summer, continue being employed in that arena so that my clearance will still be used. Would I be able to participate in CLS during the summer without jeopardizing my clearance?

It would depend on the level of clearance. It probably wouldn't jeopardize your clearance either way, but if you get the scholarship you should 1) let the agency know in advance all the details about your trip if you are currently employed by them, and 2) keep a details journal of your foreign contacts to report when you get home. You probably have a hiring point of contact within that agency when you first applied that can provide more details on how to go about this.

[aseolyoung]

37 minutes ago, sab333 said:

I'm reallllly hoping that's the case. Has anyone tried logging in to their account? It let me log in yesterday and see my application, but today the same link brings me to a different page that says "Application closed" and I can't log in anymore. I'm not sure if that's just because the application is closed (but it was also closed yesterday and it let me log in?) or if I should be worried.

I hope this is the case too, but AIS is used for programs other than CLS, so I wouldn't bet on it too heavily. However, my hopeful heart says that they could be preparing the system for the influx of people filling out the finalist forms...

[sab333]

5 hours ago, sab333 said:

I'm reallllly hoping that's the case. Has anyone tried logging in to their account? It let me log in yesterday and see my application, but today the same link brings me to a different page that says "Application closed" and I can't log in anymore. I'm not sure if that's just because the application is closed (but it was also closed yesterday and it let me log in?) or if I should be worried.

Disregard this. I just had to change my password and it worked again.

[blue_sugar]

13 hours ago, aseolyoung said:

It would depend on the level of clearance. It probably wouldn't jeopardize your clearance either way, but if you get the scholarship you should 1) let the agency know in advance all the details about your trip if you are currently employed by them, and 2) keep a details journal of your foreign contacts to report when you get home. You probably have a hiring point of contact within that agency when you first applied that can provide more details on how to go about this.

Thanks aseolyoung! I really hope my agency will let me do it -- improving my language skills in a critical language through a government-sponsored program without my specific agency having to pay any money can only be a win-win ?

Edited February 26, 2019 by blue_sugar

[aspyindisguise]

out of curiosity and anxiety for hearing the results, why do yall want to get this scholarship?

[nichinichisou]

7 hours ago, aspyindisguise said:

out of curiosity and anxiety for hearing the results, why do yall want to get this scholarship?

I'm hoping to work in japan after graduation, so any opportunity i can take to get a bit closer to becoming fluent is amazing...! I'm even willing to brave the humidity of a Japanese summer to do it!

What about you?

 

[Relly]

15 hours ago, aspyindisguise said:

out of curiosity and anxiety for hearing the results, why do yall want to get this scholarship?

At this point in time I want to work in international law, especially where it pertains to Russia and Eastern Europe. I have my eyes on working in one of of two departments of the Office of the Legal Advisor of the U.S. Being as close to fluent as possible in Russian with at least a cursory understanding of Russian culture and society would aid in this. I have a couple other ideas of what I would want to do with Russian, but that's the main motivator right now.

[aspyindisguise]

15 hours ago, nichinichisou said:

I'm hoping to work in japan after graduation, so any opportunity i can take to get a bit closer to becoming fluent is amazing...! I'm even willing to brave the humidity of a Japanese summer to do it!

What about you?

 

 

7 hours ago, Relly said:

At this point in time I want to work in international law, especially where it pertains to Russia and Eastern Europe. I have my eyes on working in one of of two departments of the Office of the Legal Advisor of the U.S. Being as close to fluent as possible in Russian with at least a cursory understanding of Russian culture and society would aid in this. I have a couple other ideas of what I would want to do with Russian, but that's the main motivator right now.

Cool! I applied for Arabic to do ESL tutoring and work with refugees in the US and around the world

[MadyMccy]

Intermediate Mandarin here! I have been stalking around this forum for a while, and just wanted to wish everyone good luck!! Just a few more days!

[APasq]

On 2/26/2019 at 5:18 PM, aspyindisguise said:

out of curiosity and anxiety for hearing the results, why do yall want to get this scholarship?

I am a semifinalist for advanced Arabic (I don't think I mentioned my level in earlier posts). I am hoping to increase my speaking, reading, and listening skills for the purposes of conducting historical research on Arab populations. My period of interest is the 20th century and I am hoping to eventually conduct interviews with native language speakers as part of my project/s. My current research focuses on a comparative study of student protests but I may transition into Arab-American populations of the 20th century for my dissertation. I am just finishing up my M.A. now so I have a bit of time before I have to decide. I just know the language is crucial for my historical interests.

[nervousgal]

Hey y'all, I'm a semifinalist for Turkish! Super anxious to hear back about results. I applied for advanced beginning Turkish because I'm really interested in studying Turkish migration policy, as well as Turkish policy towards Cyprus. Most of the country's policies are actually only in Turkish! I also applied because I'm a Fulbright ETA Semi-Finalist to Turkey and want to expand my knowledge of Turkish to facilitate a Turkish-English language book club that would have a wider variety of books to choose from. Fingers crossed that CLS provides me with an opportunity to prepare my language skills for these things. Sending good vibes to everyone on this forum!

[@hampsowwkg]

On 2/26/2019 at 2:18 PM, aspyindisguise said:

out of curiosity and anxiety for hearing the results, why do yall want to get this scholarship?

Semi-finalist for beginning Korean jumping in! I applied because as a graduating senior I want to work in the tech industry, and where I have interned in the past has a lot of ties to Korea. I'm hoping this program can help me be a stand-out applicant, and hopefully give me the ability to work abroad.