Fulbright Scholar This Month February 2025 Scroll to: Letter from the Editor | Editorial Feature | Important Dates | Events Letter from the Editor Dear Karen, As of this mailing, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program’s 2026-2027 competition is officially open! In this mailing, you are among the very first to learn about our opportunities for U.S. citizens to go abroad in Fall 2026 – Spring 2027. The competition opening means you now have seven months to write your best application, as our due date will be September 15, 2025 at 5:00 PM EDT (UTC-4:00). While this is a generous amount of time for a grant-writing exercise, perhaps the most important step is this first one you will take: choosing one award among our 380+ opportunities for your application. You can only apply for one award per year/competition cycle, so you need to choose wisely. We encourage you to take a look at our online application and our Application page, which offers plenty of guidance on how to best spend your seven months to write a Fulbright U.S. Scholar application. The application does not require you to work in one sitting, so the sooner you start working online, the sooner we can see your progress and offer you help. Our job on the Fulbright Scholar Outreach and Recruitment team is to help you apply, assisting with everything from award choice to the online application. Our first piece of help for you comes via our Editorial Feature this month, “How to Read a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award,” but we are also available in our full slate of webinar programming, our office hours where we can answer your questions live, and via email. Each of the regional inboxes below reaches a real, live, Fulbright staff member who can answer your questions: East Asia and the Pacific Awards: eastasiapacific@iie.org Europe and Eurasia Awards: europeeurasia@iie.org International Education Administrator Awards: iea@iie.org Middle East and North Africa Awards: middleeastnorthafrica@iie.org South and Central Asia Awards: southcentralasia@iie.org Sub-Saharan Africa Awards: subsaharanafrica@iie.org Western Hemisphere Awards: westhem@iie.org We hope to either see you at our launch event today, at another virtual event, or in our inboxes! This month’s action: Consider our 380+ Fulbright Scholar Awards for U.S. citizens and read our Editorial Feature below to find out how to read an award to find the best fit for your application. Sincerely, Julia V. Lieber, Ph.D. The Fulbright Scholar Program Outreach and Recruitment Team Back to top Editorial Feature How to Read a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award We are so excited that you are considering applying to one of our 380+ opportunities for U.S. citizens to go abroad for research, teaching, and professional projects. Because our award offering is so vast, we want to help you understand how to find the best award for you because you can only apply to one award per year/competition cycle. Therefore the best way to “hedge your bets” is not to apply to multiple awards (which our application system will prohibit!) but to find the best possible fit for your application and, indeed, your collaborative work! You can find that best award for you by taking advantage of the ways we share our awards on our website, fulbrightscholars.org. In this month’s Editorial Feature, we want to especially draw your attention to the four tabs of helpful information on each award, our Comparison Tool, and contacts on each award. Four Tabs on Each Award The most important thing to know about finding your best fit among our awards is that every award has four tabs, and you have not truly read the award until you have read all four tabs. At the upper left corner of any award, you will see these four tabs: Here is what you will learn on each tab: Award Details: This box at the top of this page indicates which award activities are permissible on this award, which applicant career profile and disciplines may apply, and how many recipients there are for an award (Don’t read too much into this! “Smaller awards” also have smaller possible applicant pools!). Countries also share here when they would like for you to start and for how long you can be in-country. Further down on the page, the country and/or specified host institution tells you what they are looking for an applicant to do. Keep scrolling down to see if there are any “Areas of Interest,” which you should interpret not as a way to exclude but instead as a clue for how to tailor your application. Award Requirements: If you got excited by the first tab, temper your excitement until you are sure you meet the requirements on this tab! Here countries share citizenship or residency requirements, language requirements, and, on some awards, “Additional Requirements” in a box towards the bottom of the page. Here you also find out if an Invitation Letter is required. We here on the IIE Fulbright Scholar team are here to help you with Invitation Letters using our guide and so are the helpful contacts in the the blue box at the bottom of this tab. Award Benefits: Here you learn about the award stipend, which is typically disbursed monthly. Any monies listed on this tab go directly to the grantee and do not require a budget; if you are selected, these funds are yours to use as you wish to fund your presence in-country. The stipends are carefully calculated according to the “Estimated Cost of Living,” which is also indicated on this tab. Lastly, many countries will show “Dependent Benefits” on this tab to indicate that additional money is available for dependents. Please do not read a lack of these funds to mean you cannot bring your family, as the vast majority of grantees are able to bring their loved ones with them. Country Overview: Even if you think you know a country inside and out, we always encourage you to read this tab because it is here that countries give you more information about what they prioritize in a Fulbright Scholar application – valuable clues to what they will look for in selection! They might indicate specific themes or issues they would like to see in your application as well as any logistical information of which you should be aware as you draft your Project Statement. There are also some “fun facts” here to help you envision yourself in-country. Comparison Tool for Awards Now that you know how to read an award in its entirety, you might be wondering how to compare awards to each other. Our website has a handy “Comparison Tool” that allows to compare important details of awards. You can click the checkbox on up to three awards to load them into the Comparison Tool: Then at the bottom, you’ll see your three choices loaded: Once you click “Compare,” you are directed to a new page, where you can even check off “Highlight Differences” in the upper left: Happy comparison shopping! We hope this tool makes it easier for you to choose an award. Contacts on Each Award As mentioned in our Letter from the Editor above, the Fulbright Scholar team at IIE is here to help you as you apply. Our names, email address, and phone numbers are on each of the awards we represent. You need only look on the lefthand side of any award to get in touch with us: While IIE staff should be your first point of contact, there are also in-country staff available to help you with questions about making contacts in-country or simply living on the ground in their nation. These names and contacts are usually found on the Award Requirements tab of an award in the blue box at the bottom: We are here to help and hope to hear from you during your application process. Back to top Important Dates February 18, 2025 Fulbright U.S. Scholar 2026-2027 Competition Launch September 15, 2025 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Application Deadline, 5:00 PM EDT (UTC-4:00) Back to top Events March 10, 2025 at 2:00 PM EDT (UTC-4:00) Fulbright U.S. Scholar Opportunities in the East Asia and the Pacific Region Register here! March 11, 2025 at 2:00 PM EDT (UTC-4:00) Fulbright U.S. Scholar Opportunities in the Europe and Eurasia Region Register here! March 13, 2025 at 2:00 PM EDT (UTC-4:00) Fulbright U.S. Scholar Opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa Region Register here! March 17, 2025 at 2:00 PM EDT (UTC-4:00) Fulbright U.S. Scholar Opportunities in the South and Central Asia Region Register here! March 18, 2025 at 2:00 PM EDT (UTC-4:00) Fulbright U.S. Scholar Opportunities in the Western Hemisphere Region Register here! March 19, 2025 at 2:00 PM EDT (UTC-4:00) Fulbright U.S. Scholar Opportunities in the Sub-Saharan Africa Region Register here! Here we list our events in the next few weeks. Our entire calendar of webinars and office hours is online for your registration! Back to top |