Opportunities for Undergraduate and Graduate Students

With limited exceptions, Fulbright applicants must have a Bachelor's degree or the equivalent before the start of the Fulbright grant.

Graduate and Doctoral Students 

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers fellowships for U.S. graduating college seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists to study, conduct research, and/or teach English abroad.

The Fulbright Foreign Student Program offers opportunities for foreign graduate students, young professionals and artists from
abroad to study, conduct research, and/or teach their native language in the U.S.

The Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, offers awards to post-doctoral U.S. faculty to support research and training efforts overseas that focus on non-western foreign languages and area studies. Note: No new awards will be made through this program in financial year 2011 because of substantially reduced funding.

Undergraduate Students

While Fulbright grants may not be available for undergraduate research and study, it's never too early to start thinking about a Fulbright application.

For example, most U.S. institutions have Fulbright Program Advisers, who can provide information and guidance to U.S. students interested in applying for Fulbright awards for study, research, or teaching assistantships abroad.  First and second-year U.S. college students are encouraged to contact Fulbright Program Advisers to develop a plan of action.

The U.S. Department of State's Office of Academic Exchange Programs also offers several other grant opportunities for U.S. and foreign undergraduate students:

Non-U.S. Undergraduate Students

The Global Undergraduate Exchange Program (Global UGRAD Program) provides one semester and academic year scholarships to outstanding undergraduate students from underrepresented sectors in East Asia, Eurasia and Central Asia, the Near East and South Asia and the Western Hemisphere for non-degree full-time study combined with community service, internships and cultural enrichment.

The Study of United States Institutes for Student Leaders are four-to-six week academic programs for small groups of foreign undergraduate leaders.  Hosted by academic institutions throughout the United States, the Student Leader Institutes include an intensive academic component, an educational study tour to other regions of the country, local community service activities, and a unique opportunity to get to know American peers. 

U.S. Undergraduate Students

The Critical Language Scholarship Program provides seven to ten weeks of group-based overseas foreign language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences in thirteen critical need languages for U.S. citizens who are students at the undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels.The thirteen languages offered are Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla/Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish and Urdu.