Preparing for your Fulbright interview
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There are two kinds of interviews for the Fulbright US Student Program. During the course of your Fulbright application, you may encounter one, both, or none at all. If you apply through a college or university, the first interview is an on-campus interview. After the initial application stage, if you are named a semi-finalist, there’s a possible second interview.
The Fulbright semi-finalist interview: will you have one?
Some countries conduct interviews and will notify you to schedule via email. You’ve already added Fulbright/IIE email addresses to your contacts, right?
For some countries, interviews are for general research awards; some conduct interviews for the ETA. Others conduct interviews only for specific awards within their country’s portfolio of awards (for example, affiliated graduate school placements.) The interview will be relatively short. The best approach is to be prepared.
How to Prepare
Schedule a mock interview with a friend, mentor, coach, or fellow semi-finalist (ideally one for a different country or program, who’s not in direct competition with you.) If you were in a study group for a recent course, reach out to that group to see if anyone wants to practice interviewing. It’s likely that your friends and former classmates are preparing for job interviews, and the opportunity for mutual feedback is a good one.
Both you and your mock interviewer/s should take some time to prepare questions to ask each other. You should prepare answers for the kinds of questions that are likely to be asked. Having a few talking points ready to go can make the experience a pleasant one overall.
You should be able to address:
your interest in and enthusiasm for the country
what you plan on doing (for research or teaching English)
your abilities to carry out the work you proposed
your awareness of current events in the host country and the host country’s region
your cultural exchange plans
your hobbies and interests outside of the Fulbright
The interview is in … Russian?
Unless there was no language requirement for the specific country to which you applied or for the project that you proposed (lab science research, for example), the interview will most likely be partially, if not completely, in the host country’s language relevant to your project. If at all possible, practice interviewing in your target language. If you don’t have any speakers of your relevant language local to you, conduct your mock interview over skype or by phone; it’ll be great preparation for the actual interview.
Current events and cultural awareness
Your interviewer/s may or may not be experts in your field of study or your research methods. Your interview may spend a very small amount of time, if any, on the proposal itself. It’s likely that your interview will focus more on the cultural exchange components and on your interest in both your proposed host country and that country’s world region.
Here are a few ways to stay informed about current events. Since you’ve got a deep interest in your proposed country, you’re likely already doing at least one of these. But just in case you need an idea or two, you should seriously consider keeping up with:
a blog, magazine, or other primarily cultural resource of your proposed host country or region. It need not be academic and could focus on something you’re particularly interested in, whether that be dance, travel, food, or sports.
at least one newspaper that focuses on your host country or region (English-language would be acceptable; if your interview or project is in a non-English language, we highly recommend also reading the target-language version of the same.) Because most newspapers outside of the US have some sort of political party affiliation, you should be aware of your resource’s positioning in your host country’s political spectrum.
a television program or radio show from the region.
General interview preparation advice, regardless of who’s interviewing you:
Find information about your interviewers beforehand, if possible. Are they affiliated with the program to which you’re applying? In what capacity? Are they former grantees themselves? You may or may not be given the name/s of your interviewers beforehand: if you are, a quick search of their name plus Fulbright could let you know what their role is. If you’re not given their name/s beforehand: don’t worry about it! It’s possible that there is a pool of interviewers for your country/program and that the one/s who interview you happen to be the ones who were available in the time slot during which you were available.
If this is a context in which you applied for a specific type of graduate program, think about how what you take away from the graduate program will advance not only your career and life personally, but how you will share those experiences, both in your proposed host country and after your return
Cultural exchange is at the core of the Fulbright itself. Regardless of whether that Fulbright is for teaching English in Korea, researching health communication in Brazil, or completing a graduate degree in the US, the commonality between Fulbrights is the underlying work of soft diplomacy between the United States and the rest of the world.
Think about your cultural openness, your adaptability, and your resourcefulness. What’s going to be culturally different about your host country than your home country? How about your home/university city or town from your proposed
How can you prepare for those differences? What’s one moment in which you’ve made the best out of a bad situation?
ETA-Specific Interview Preparation
While we don’t have numbers to substantiate this, interviews seem to be more common for the ETA programs than for the research/study awards.
One major difference between ETA and research/study awards is that research/study applicants get to propose the cities and regions where they will carry out their projects; ETAs usually don’t. Understanding your suitability for one of the particular contexts for which your program places ETAs may be one of the goals of your ETA interview. You should go to the interview prepared to discuss the following:
Region/city interest and preference. Within a single ETA program, one grantee could be placed as a university language instructor in a capital city, and another could be placed with early-elementary students in a small village. While you may have a preference for one city or region over another: would you mind being placed somewhere you know less about? Would you adapt well to being the only American in your town?
Past teaching/tutoring or mentoring experience. How did you get involved in teaching/tutoring? What is the most challenging thing about it? Why do you love it?
Classroom management and cultural difference issues: how do you deal with a disinterested student? A disruptive one? How are students in your proposed host country expected to contribute in a classroom situation?
Prepare your interview space
Your interview will be either via telephone or through a video conferencing service. If you have access to an office or bookable meeting room with a landline or high-speed internet connection/conferencing dial-in system, take advantage of that. You want to be able to hear (and possibly see) your interviewer/s clearly.
Prepare your laptop. If your interview will be over skype or a similar service: make sure you have the current version of the app installed at least one (and ideally two or more) days before your call, and that you’ve tested it. Are you dialing in to a phone number? Great: practice dialing in to one. Are they calling you? also great: practice dialing in to your app and make sure all audio and video functions work. For the day of the interview, make sure your laptop is fully charged and that you have a way to plug it in. Disable all background and video apps that could make your device run more slowly than it should. Close all extraneous tabs on your browser; the last thing you want is a TikTok auto-playing while you’re being asked a question.
Prepare the space where you will have the interview. If your interview will be by phone without video, a hands-free device with a speaker may help you hear the questions more clearly and free your hands for jotting ideas or finding relevant portions of your proposal. If you’ll have a video interview, make sure that the lighting is generally soft, doesn’t backlight you, and that there’s nothing particularly strange or culturally or situationally inappropriate in your background. Wine bottles in the background? A political or movie poster? An open closet? Find a different location.
Prepare your supporting and reference materials. Print out notes that you may have, including your proposal in case your interviewers ask you to elaborate on your project plan or research question. If you included one in your application, make sure you also print out your language study plan and your plans for cultural exchange. Get a notebook ready, as well as a couple of favorite pens. A fresh whiteboard marker, sticky notes, or whatever other tools help you to organize your thoughts and be productive are also in order.
At the interview itself
Be on time. If you have an office/library space for the purpose, be sure to book it for at least 5 minutes in advance of the time at which you need to dial in, and that your scheduled time is for at least 15 minutes longer than the interview is expected to take, in the event that your interviewers are running late.
First of all: relax. You’ve prepared as much as you can, and the US-based committee thought enough of your application to forward it to your host country’s committee. Second of all: while the interview is an important component of the selection process, it’s only one component. If you stumble on a sentence or two, that’s okay.
If one of your interviewers speaks very quickly, or if your interview is in your host country’s language, don’t be shy about asking your interviewer to repeat the question. It’s more important to be deliberate and to answer the question that’s been asked than to wing it and be off-track.
Thank your interviewers. It’s highly likely that they’ve volunteered their time in order to conduct the interview with you; many interviewers are Fulbright alumni.
You’ve got this.
Share about your experience
Learn from others and help others learn from your experience by sharing about your interview experience in the Fulbright Grant Applicant Facebook Group or Fulbright SubReddit.
Still have questions? Chat with a Fulbright expert
We host regular free virtual office hours where you can with one of us to have your questions answered. Office hours are great for people who don’t have access to a campus Fulbright Program Adviser.