/ Provost's Office

Important Dates

2017 Application Process Timeline for 2019-2020 Grants

If you are a junior this year (2017–2018) and are considering applying for a Fulbright Fellowship in fall 2018 (that is, for a fellowship that begins during the 2018–2019 academic year), you need to get an early start on the application process. It’s especially important to start early if you will be off campus in spring 2018.

Here are the important dates in fall 2017 (for 2019) Fulbright Fellowship application calendar. If you will be here in spring 2018, you will start the process in January 2018.

October 17 or 18, 2017 Attend one of the offered information sessions posted on Hope’s campus calendar. If you are a Hope College freshman, sophomore or junior interested in being on our e-mail list for future interest, complete this form: Fulbright: Future Interest
October 30, 2017

You may do this anytime before this date, but please do it by the date.

You will be considered a serious candidate only after submitting the items listed below. You can always change your mind later.

If you are planning to apply for a Fulbright that will fund you to spend the academic year 2019–2020 abroad, please fill out our Fulbright Form: Fulbright: Application Process to indicate your intention to proceed with the application process. Include:

  1. Your full name.
  2. Your phone number.
  3. Your fellowship type: “Teaching Assistantship” or “Research/Study.”
  4. The country to which you plan to apply (choose only one).
  5. The e-mails of three faculty referees who can speak to your qualifications for this award, and a foreign language evaluator if required. You can change these names later, but please fill in your best options.
  6. Graduation year and month.

If you have problems with the form linked above, please email Cory Lakatos for assistance. At any point, you may drop the process; just email gibbs@hope.edu or maiullo@hope.edu.

In addition, please locate, purchase (or borrow), and read a book – yes, an actual book – about the country where you plan to study or teach.

November 2017
Date TBA
Attend a mandatory seminar on writing essays for the Fulbright Scholars program. If you cannot attend, speak with the advisors about what you must do instead.
Mid-November 2017
Date TBA

Turn in the following documents electronically as Word docs, double-spaced, with your name and the type of essay in the filename, sent to both gibbs@hope.edu and maiullo@hope.edu:

  1. Draft of your statement of your Statement of Grant Purpose (two double-spaced pages for English Teaching Assistantships; four double-spaced pages for research/study grants).
  2. Draft of your two-page (double-spaced) Personal Statement. See the Fulbright web site and the Writing Requirements for information about preparation of these documents. Keep working on them, even after you’ve sent drafts to the advisors.
  3. A three- to four-page essay on a book (A book! Not a website!) that you have read about the country to which you plan to apply. Be sure to include full bibliographic information (author, title, city, publisher, year of publication) for your book.
Late November–Early December 2017
Date tba
Attend one of the first set of mandatory essay workshops. The workshops will run about two hours. Exact times and locations to be announced. You will attend one (but not both) of the workshops.
Late November–Early December 2017 You must meet personally with Dr. Gibbs or Dr. Maiullo sometime before the end of the semester to go over your essays, discuss your list of referees, and find out what else needs to be done during the spring semester and the summer of 2018. You should continue to work on your statement of grant purpose and personal statement during the summer months.
May 1, 2018 The online application officially opens. During the months of May and June, you should complete the application to the best of your ability and ask any questions that arise in the process. Once you have received the go-ahead from the Fulbright Advisors, register your reference-letter-writers online.
June 1, 2018 Application Check. The status of your online application will be checked by the campus Fulbright advisors at this point. If you application is radically incomplete at this stage, you will be asked to complete it (or else to drop the process). You can still change it after this point, of course, and in fact you are encouraged to work on the application over the summer.
August 27, 2018 Submit your preliminary online application. Your application will be read and returned to you for corrections and finalization. We will schedule campus interviews during September, after which you will have a final opportunity to make your application “practically perfect in every way.”

Be sure to read the materials on the Hope College Fulbright website and the U.S. Fulbright website.