For Applicants

Different fellowships have different eligibility guidelines. For some, you have to be in a certain year -- for example, Truman requires that you be a junior, and Goldwater requires that you be a sophomore or a junior. (If you have an unusual D-Plan, always check with us, because we can help you figure out your eligibility.) For others, eligibility depends on citizenship and/or age. Some fellowships have GPA requirements. On each of the individual fellowships pages on our website, we list the eligibility criteria. 

The Fellowships Office offers a wide-range of support, beginning with initial conversations about your interests and which fellowships will be the best fit. From there, we talk about specific requirements, help brainstorm recommenders and essay ideas, and provide feedback on drafts. After the campus deadline, we provide additional feedback for endorsed/nominated applicants as they make final revisions on their materials. Later in the process, we do mock interviews with finalists. 

This is an impossible question to answer! Some fellowships are very competitive; others have nearly 50/50 odds. Sometimes people apply in one cycle and aren't successful, and then they are successful in the next cycle. Sometimes people apply for multiple fellowships and win one. Winning a fellowship is wonderful, of course, but the process is equally useful in helping you to refine your personal story, hone your CV or resume, and practice talking about who you are. Almost all of our fellowship applicants say that the process later helped them with job or grad school applications -- and in that way, there's no downside to applying! 

That depends on you! Many people apply for multiple fellowships. Sometimes this means that they apply for something early in their time at Dartmouth (e.g., Gilman, Critical Language Scholarship, Goldwater, Obama Voyager, John Robert Lewis) and then later for a postgraduate fellowship (e.g., Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, Schwarzman). It can also mean that they apply for multiple fellowships at the same time. We've had people apply for (and win!) both Goldwater and Truman, for example. We also have people each year who apply for multiple postgraduate fellowships, especially if they are interested in a range of opportunities. Other people focus on a single opportunity that is the best fit for them. There's no right or wrong answer to this question, and it's a conversation we have a lot in one-on-one meetings. 

We have campus deadlines whenever the fellowship requires either an endorsement or a nomination. For those fellowships, we are tasked with identifying applicants to send to the national competition. Sometimes there are limits on the number of applicants we can endorse or nominate. With Goldwater, Truman, and each branch of Udall, we are limited to four applicants a year (plus potentially a transfer student or veteran). With Marshall, we can endorse 24 applicants a year. In other cases, as with Rhodes and Fulbright, there's no limit on the number of endorsed or nominated applicants. 

For application cycles where we have to make decisions about endorsement or nomination, applications are reviewed by the Committee on Graduate Fellowships. The campus deadline gives us time to review applications and make decisions. For many of these fellowships, we also use that time to prepare endorsement letters (letters that serve as recommendations from the College) and to provide additional feedback so you can make revisions. Sometimes we also have campus interviews. 

Although you will usually be able to keep revising between the campus deadline and the national deadline, we require all application materials by the campus deadline so that we can make endorsement and nomination decisions fairly and equitably. 

Guidlines on recommenders differ from one fellowship to another. In many cases, it makes sense to ask faculty members who have taught you in a class and who know you and your work well. In other cases, especially for fellowships that focus on public service or work experience, you're more likely to ask a former/current supervisor or community mentor. We typically discourage applicants from asking peers, graduate students, or postdocs, although there are exceptions. Always check with the fellowship guidelines and meet with us to brainstorm potential recommenders -- don't assume that you'll necessarily ask faculty. The most important thing is that the recommenders know you well and are able to speak to the specific criteria for the fellowship. 

For fellowships that fund graduate school, you will likely need recommendations for the fellowship AND for the graduate school application. These might be the same people, but keep in mind that the fellowship will almost certainly have different criteria (leadership, creativity, public service) that are different from those of the graduate program (which tend to focus on academic strengths). 

It's good practice to ask recommenders at least a month ahead of the campus deadline (or national deadline if there is no campus deadline), earlier if better. 

Applicants requesting disability-related accommodations for the fellowship application process or experience should talk with Student Accessibility Services. Although some accommodations cannot be made (national deadlines are final and inflexible), other accommodations can be made for the fellowship application process. Depending on the national fellowship and the country that it's in, accommodations may also be possible while on the fellowship.