DeKALB | Students itching to study abroad may not need to shell out thousands of dollars to travel to Rome or Russia.

The Fulbright Scholarship is a nationwide grant opportunity available to students after they graduate.

The scholarship gives students the chance to travel to a foreign country as long as the have the intent to enroll in a university there, conduct research or do something to benefit that country, such as teach the English language to natives.

The application process

Students can travel to a variety of different places, but those who choose less sought-after destinations have a better chance of getting the grant.

Deborah Pierce, executive director of the Division International Programs, said students going to places like Hungary, Ukraine and Korea will get better results than those who try for more popular destinations.

“Students come to me and say ‘I want to go to England’ and it’s just not that easy,” Pierce said. “Last year 495 people applied to go to the U.K. and only 10 got in.”

The students applying for the scholarship will have to write two essays, Pierce said. The first essay catalogues their intellectual history, telling about their journey from kindergarten to college and what they have learned along the way.

The second essay is a proposal of what the student will do while in the country.

“A student needs to write up what they will do with the money and how they will do it,” Pierce said. She also noted students typically start the application process in the late spring or early summer before the October deadline.

“The applications need to arrive in New York during the third week in October,” Pierce said. “So the deadline for students to have their applications in to us is always sometime in late September.”

One special experience

Vicki Clarke, an NIU alumna now working at NIU as the program coordinator of the Division of Public Administration, was granted a Fulbright Scholarship and traveled to Ghana, West Africa from 1998 to 2001.

“My main fields of study were comparative politics and public administration, and I knew that I wanted to do field research,” Clarke said. “So I applied for the grant and went through a very rigorous review process.”

She said the work she did in Ghana was both interesting and challenging. Clarke had to learn the language and gain the trust of the residents so she could interview them for her research.

“I had to turn in two reports to the [Fulbright offices], one mid-year report and a final one when I was finished,” Clarke said. “They weren’t very detailed but they covered a lot of issues.”

Lauren Stott is a Campus Reporter for the Northern Star.