Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowships

[Heimat Historian]

I started looking into FLAS fellowships recently and I have some questions.  

 

1. Do most graduate schools offer these fellowships?

 

2. Because many admission decisions won't be made until after the deadline, it seems that most first year grad students won't get one of these.  Is that accurate? 

 

3.  How, generally speaking, do they work?  

 

4.  If awarded a FLAS fellowship, is this in lieu of or in addition to other funding provided by the university? 

 

I apologize if this has been covered in another thread.  Was just curious about additional sources of funding. 

 

 

[kyjin]

1. Most US institutions offer it, but check with your specific schools. 

2. No; first year students can get these awards. Some schools will delay funding news until after the FLAS deadline, others will replace your funding with FLAS for the first year, etc. I know for my school, if you receive a FLAS and the total package is less than what you are offered, your department will do a "bump up" to make up the difference. (Ie you are offered 25k by department, FLAS offers 20k, department will pay the 5k difference. My department also does this for when we TA since most of our packages are higher than the TA salary.) 

3. The idea with FLAS is that you are taking specific language. Again, specifics depend from program to program as to which languages are eligible and at what level, but you are required to do language training throughout the time period of the funding. If you don't take the language, no funding. 

4. See above; in lieu of, but if it works any way like it does for my institution, if there is a difference in funding, your department should provide the difference. 

[Heimat Historian]

Thanks for the information.  I do have a question about number 2.  If I don't know where I"m going to be going to school (because as school hasn't sent out notifications), don't I have to apply through the school to get the FLAS?  Is there a different way to apply?  

[rising_star]

Yes, you apply through the school. You should be able to apply as a prospective student, with funding pending your admission to a specific department. Not all of the schools you applied to have FLAS Fellowships though, and not for all languages either. 

[IvanBezdomnii]

I've had four of these. NO NO NO! Most schools do not offer them and the numbers were slashed dramatically last year. Schools that do offer them sometimes only offer them for specific languages. You will need to apply for a critical needs language. You will not be able to get one for French, Spanish or German (maybe German at a very very high level). Just wanted to correct that misinformation.

[Heimat Historian]

Interesting.  Thank you all for your input.  I'll attempt to apply through my schools.  Thanks again. 

[IvanBezdomnii]

Another heads up, FLAS awards are granted by the government not to schools per say but centers. You'll need to apply through those (i.e. The Center for Asian Studies at x University).

[rising_star]

Yea, you'll need to look for Title VI centers. There's a list online that you can consult.

[czesc]

I've had four of these. NO NO NO! Most schools do not offer them and the numbers were slashed dramatically last year. Schools that do offer them sometimes only offer them for specific languages. You will need to apply for a critical needs language. You will not be able to get one for French, Spanish or German (maybe German at a very very high level). Just wanted to correct that misinformation.

 

Just to add to this - FLAS scholarships that are available are tied in some way to the designation of a school's regional studies centers as NRCs (National Resource Centers). For example, Cornell is currently an NRC for South and Southeast Asia. It lost NRC designation for Europe (and, I think, East Asia) this cycle. Since either FLAS or Cornell considered some Middle Eastern languages within the "Europe" category, you can no longer get a FLAS grant at Cornell (at least until the next grant cycle begins, in 2018) for Arabic or Turkish, even though those are theoretically eligible "critical languages". tl;dr, it's very important to know which languages a school offers, specifically.

 

Also, funding cycles are every four years, and the languages funded by a given school can change at the end of that period. Annoyingly, if you apply the year a cycle shifts, and the school does not receive funding for your language, you may be accepted by the school but wind up with no funding because their expected successful application was denied by the federal government. 

 

One more thing - on top of language classes, FLAS also requires you to do a certain amount of coursework related to the culture of the region/language you're studying. There seems to be quite a bit of flexibility to negotiate this with the school disbursing FLAS funding to you, though.

Edited February 9, 2015 by czesc

[IvanBezdomnii]

Just to add to this - FLAS scholarships that are available are tied in some way to the designation of a school's regional studies centers as NRCs (National Resource Centers). For example, Cornell is currently an NRC for South and Southeast Asia. It lost NRC designation for Europe (and, I think, East Asia) this cycle. Since either FLAS or Cornell considered some Middle Eastern languages within the "Europe" category, you can no longer get a FLAS grant at Cornell (at least until the next grant cycle begins, in 2018) for Arabic or Turkish, even though those are theoretically eligible "critical languages". tl;dr, it's very important to know which languages a school offers, specifically.

 

Also, funding cycles are every four years, and the languages funded by a given school can change at the end of that period. Annoyingly, if you apply the year a cycle shifts, and the school does not receive funding for your language, you may be accepted by the school but wind up with no funding because their expected successful application was denied by the federal government. 

 

One more thing - on top of language classes, FLAS also requires you to do a certain amount of coursework related to the culture of the region/language you're studying. There seems to be quite a bit of flexibility to negotiate this with the school disbursing FLAS funding to you, though.

Correct and useful information. I think the only school that got everything they asked for last cycle was Chicago.