Fulbright Invitation Letter: Fill & Download for Free

There are usually three ways to get supporting funds for such activities:Research fellowships like Endeavour, Fulbright, Waari, Raman-Charpak: Fellowship amount includes funds for travel, stay and insurance. One has the freedom to choose the laboratory and the professor. The country-specific fellowship details can be easily found on google. However, the selection is very competitive in nature and requires a good research plan, well-decorated CV, a strong invitation letter from host university and wonderful recommendations.Joint Projects like Horizon 2020, DST-SDC: Approval of grant is a time-taking process and collaboration between research labs is initiated by professors. However, the exchange of research scholars is usually well funded in such cases and scholarly outcome of the exchange is amplified by previous collaboration between both the laboratories.Exchange Visits like Sakura, Erasmus+: Some of the exchange programs are host funded and will fall in category 1 for application purposes. IITs have MOUs with a couple of foreign universities. If your lab of interest is in collaborating institutions, you can contact your office of international relations for further information. Usually, these programs do not support doctoral exchanges and if they do, you will need the documents mentioned in point 1 as the number of these exchanges is country limited (Highly competitive).

The process starts with an application. You will have to collect your tertiary education transcripts and recommendation letters (two from academia and one from work place) for your application. Next, and this is quite important, write up a good personal statement and study research objective (this will be sent out to all the universities which you apply). You may want to take some time to make sure that these are as good as possible. After you have completed your application, submit it (I had to submit the dossier at the US embassy and they did not accept online application).After a while, you will get an invitation to sit for TOEFL ITP test. This is just some sort of assessment test to check whether you will be selected for an interview or not. If you get good assessment scores, you will have to go through an interview (I was interviewed by a board of 6 people, each asking different aspects: leadership, professional track record, future plan, etc). Then you will have to sit for TOEFL PBT or IBT if you pass the interview round. Then GRE. After all those tests, you will not hear back from Fulbright for a couple of months, usually two to three months.What they are doing by that time is sending your application to your chosen universities or if they think that you will be better fit at some other universities, they will get back to you with a new list of candidate universities. Then your application dossier is sent to those universities and they will wait for replies from universities. At this point, you cannot communicate directly with those universities. If everything goes well (funding allocated to you from Fulbright + scholarship received from the universities which accept you), you will get the offer letter and you have to decide which university you will want to go. Once you have selected a university and everything is in place, you are basically set for a visa interview at the US embassy. If you get J1 visa stamped on your passport, you are good to go to the US!Based on your TOEFL test scores, you may either have to go through pre-academic program (which lasts for three weeks before your program starts) or just an orientation program (which just last for three days before your program starts). After that you go to your university and start studying!

I found out I was accepted to an Ivy League. I thought I was dreaming when my acceptance flashed on my screen. I had that feeling that many students looking to Ivy Leagues dream of- that contentment; the feeling that everything you’ve ever worked for has culminated at this one place, and you are reaping life’s hard earned rewards at the tender age of seventeen. For the longest time, I thought I would be attending. I had five long months to decide, and I put it off as long as I could.I also received a letter of admission to the University of Texas at Austin, my state’s flagship school (by NO means a low-tier institution, but lesser known outside the Texas area), along with a full tuition merit scholarship from the engineering school and an invitation to interview for a full ride + study abroad stipend through their Plan II Honors Program (liberal arts). The Ivy cost my family, who lay just outside the maximum possible income bracket to qualify for aid, 75k a year. My situation was crazy because, as many upper middle class students can relate, I’d grown up in a top public high school, being prepared for college , surrounded by affluent peers who were equally ambitious and motivated. I had never known any other reality but “work, earn the fruits of your work, and take the reward.” In general, you were viewed as intelligent if you attended a top school; this was an unspoken, but widely prevalent truth, and probably the reason why admission to these top schools mattered so much to my peers (most of them, at least). I went to visit the Ivy, as I had already traveled to UT for numerous camps, events, and the scholarship interview. I am a Texas resident, so everything in the ivy school was comparatively new. The climate, the general vibe of the area, and the community of people were all EXTREMELY different from those of Austin.Finally, it was April 28 and I had to decide. I had tried to rationalize everything, made huge t charts with pros and cons, talked to people who had been in my situation, chosen one or the other school (or comparable schools), talked to adults, talked to kids, and tried to just convince myself that the Ivy would bring me the best opportunities. Finally, I decided that the Ivy was the best place for me. Class sizes were smaller, opportunities were amazing, people were smart, motivated, interesting, and quirky. It was a neat little academic bubble full of people, some of whom would be future Fulbright Scholars, Rhodes Scholars, CEO’s, millionaires, and politicians. UT was a great place, but class sizes were huge, I viewed it as a party school, and pictured myself playing beer pong on weekends, as opposed to having teatime literary discussions with Professor emeritus Toni Morrison. Never mind that UT cost my family 65k less a year. I was convinced that my parents’ financial investment would pay off. I would prove to everyone how much I could do and who I could be.To avoid a cliched and sappy story of self realization (as though this entire post isn’t one), I woke up the morning of May 1, logged onto the Ivy applicant portal, and hit “I do NOT accept.” I never looked back.If you ever catch yourself thinking that there is ANYTHING that can make you successful rather than your own internal drive, intelligence, curiosity, and work ethic, you are wrong. Yes, to an extent, your surroundings do matter. That is why such renowned higher institutions such as Ivies exist. They are life-changers for people who grow up in low income families, and are the bastions of success for those who are diamonds in the rough. To these folks I’d say, especially since the financial aid is generous, these schools are worth the price tag. However, if you ever feel like you have to buy your way to success, which is what I , and many people like me, have undoubtedly felt, then it is probably not the right decision for you. I have highly educated parents who have contributed to who I am, who have provided a comfortable environment in which I can succeed and get good grades. I do not need a comfortable safe haven like the Ivy to provide me with an academic environment in which I can succeed in.In short, I chose UT because I was happier there. I would be going for almost no cost, I made tons of friends there, and over all, Austin was just much better for my overall well being than the very polarized Ivy environment. At the Ivy, I met people who were extremely bright and had just not been given the right circumstances to shine to their fullest. I also met trust fund babies whose achievements were a result of Mom and Dad’s hard earned money. Of course, there was a wide spectrum in between. But there were other reasons. Many Ivy grads turned to banking, consulting and finance- even those with engineering degrees. There was this sense of money, payoff, and name recognition mattering more than content. Of course, there were notable exceptions. One person I met at the Ivy, from the Playwright’s Guild, was kind enough to lend me his help in making my college decision, as he had made a similar one earlier. I felt bad about forgoing the warmth and kindness of certain people on the campus and its wealth of opportunities. But I reminded myself that, there are kind people everywhere. And if you work hard enough anywhere, opportunity will come knocking.YOU, not your college, creates the magic. UT Austin provided the opportunities I needed, the money, and the environment. If anything, going to a large institution will teach me how to be proactive and look for my own opportunities. I know that my intelligence is not some metric that can be ascribed to a certain school. My life was spent working towards academic success, or what I viewed as academic success, but I never paused to think about my own well being and my eventual life outcome. Sometimes when I try to rationalize it, I say- “there will never be a point at UT Austin when I complain that the school is too easy and that I have exhausted all the opportunities.” That is near impossible, as the school is challenging and filled with activities. There was no real advantage in attending Ivies, besides instant name recognition and veneration from certain types of people.Don’t view your school as something that’ll catapult you to success- because ultimately, that can be done by you and only you.