Frequently Asked Questions

Senior, visiting senior, and postdoctoral fellowships are awarded without regard to nationality. Candidates for predoctoral dissertation fellowships must be either a US citizen or enrolled in a university in the United States.

No, you may not apply for other Center fellowships while an application is pending or once a fellowship has been awarded. If you have started an application and would like to apply for a different fellowship category, you will need to email [email protected] to delete the first application from our system.

Please send an inquiry stating your situation to [email protected].

Department chairs must submit to the Center one letter of nomination listing all candidates nominated by the department. The nomination letter is not considered a recommendation letter and is processed outside our Online Application Portal. The nomination letter may be sent by email as a PDF to [email protected]. It must be received by the application deadline. If your department chair has any questions, they should email [email protected].

As of fall 2024, the Center has no foreign language requirements. However, the application will still include a space for applicants to describe foreign language proficiencies related to their dissertation research. The committee will consider this information while conducting their evaluations. 

The Center defers to the candidacy requirements of the applicant’s department. The chair’s nomination letter should confirm that nominees have advanced to candidacy, meeting departmental requirements for coursework, residency, and preliminary examinations. 

This record should consist of professional experience in a university or museum setting for a minimum of five years and should include significant scholarly publications, or an equivalent record of achievement for the applicant’s field.

Please browse our past annual reports to view research reports by past members. If you are still uncertain, please contact [email protected].

No. You may work on your application over as many sessions as you wish before you submit it. Please be sure to save your application each time you add or change information.

No. Once you have submitted your application, you can no longer make changes.

Please enter dates following the standard US format: month/day/year.

Your application must be in English, but you may submit writing samples in other languages.

Yes. We are committed to ensuring that everyone can apply to our fellowships and participate fully if accepted. Please email [email protected] to inquire about available accommodations.

Please notify the Center of your new address by emailing [email protected].

You may choose any type of publication (for instance, article, chapter, or abstract). The predoctoral dissertation fellowship writing sample should be no more than 5,000 words, including notes. It can be an excerpt provided that the selection is self-contained and can effectively stand alone. There is no page limit for the postdoctoral, senior, and visiting senior fellowship writing samples, but files may not be larger than 5 MB.

Your writing sample should be in English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. If you do not have a writing sample in one of these languages, please send an inquiry stating your situation to [email protected].

Files will only be accepted in PDF, DOC, DOCX, RTF, and TXT formats. The maximum size for each document is 5 MB. Please remember that embedded images may significantly increase file size. If you try to upload a document larger than 5 MB, you will receive an error message and be prompted to upload a new document.

Yes.

Yes, images are allowed in supporting documentation, but there is no requirement that they be included. If images are included in the writing sample, they must fall within the listed page limit and the maximum file size for the document (5 MB). The application for predoctoral dissertation fellowships includes a section for images, where you may upload three to five images related to your dissertation proposal. Please include all images in a single file.

You will receive an email confirming receipt of your application. If you do not see this in your inbox, please check your junk or spam folders.

All notifications will be sent via email.

The Center does not provide feedback on applications. The selection process is confidential, and the Center does not forward comments from the selection committee or provide guidance on how to strengthen an application. We encourage eligible applicants to reapply with materials showing the progress they have made since their last application.

You can create an account to review the application materials and guidelines in our Online Application Portal.

Applications must be submitted on the day of their deadline by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

All applicants enter recommender information by selecting Add Recommender in the References section of the Online Application Portal. After you have entered the required information and clicked the Send Email to Recommender button, an email will be sent to the recommender with instructions for completing the online recommendation form. The status should then read: Email Sent. Recommenders for internship applicants will be contacted during the selection process; they will not use the online recommendation form.

Letters of recommendation must be submitted by the application deadline. The letters must be submitted through the Online Reference Portal by your recommenders. You must enter your recommenders into the system before they can log into the Online Reference Portal. It is your responsibility to secure a commitment from each person who will write a recommendation and ensure they submit the letter by the deadline.

Confirm whether you entered your recommender’s email address correctly by logging into your application and selecting Track References. Your recommender’s information will be listed on this page, as well as the status of the recommendation letter. This link is active after you have submitted your application. If your recommender has not received the email and it is not in their junk or spam folders, email [email protected]. 

In the Online Application Portal, on the Track References page, you can edit the name and email address of each recommender by selecting Resend/Edit Request. Updating and saving the changes will resend an email to your recommender.

You can track the status of your letters of recommendation in the Online Application Portal. For each recommender, you will see the status of the letter: Email Sent, In Progress, or Submitted. It is your responsibility to track the status of your letters of recommendation and, if necessary, to contact your recommenders to ensure they submit letters by the deadline.

Our system converts your uploaded document to a PDF. Slight variations in formatting are a by-product of the conversion process. Our reviewers are aware of this and slight irregularities will not affect the review of your application. To avoid problems in the conversion process, please use simple formatting as much as possible. You can check your original document as follows:

In Microsoft Word, click the Show/Hide ¶ button. Look for formatting that might have created problems, such as hard returns at the ends of lines, text in tables, diacritical marks, footnotes or endnotes, and page or section breaks. Delete unnecessary formatting and try uploading your document again. If you continue to have problems and think that your document is difficult to read, email [email protected] for assistance.

The PDF conversion software does not support all non-English-language characters. If your supporting materials include such characters, please view the PDF after uploading your document to be sure they appear properly. If you have access to Adobe Acrobat or any other conversion software that better supports non-English-language characters, you can convert your document to PDF and upload again.

The PDF conversion process can cause formatting changes that affect the length of your document. Please do not be concerned; slight variations are common and are not taken into consideration in evaluating applications.

First try refreshing the page. If your document has been uploaded, the file name should appear under File Upload Status as a hyperlink. You can confirm that the file has uploaded successfully by clicking on the hyperlink and viewing your file. If the link does not appear, try uploading your document again. If it fails to upload a second time, there may be a problem with the document. Email your document to [email protected]; if necessary, we will manually convert it for you.

Our application form does not support HTML formatting.

Please try another computer and/or make sure that you have the latest version of your web browser installed.