The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill tied for 3rd among public research universities with the most students and recent graduates receiving Fulbright awards for 2014-2015. UNC is ranked 10th nationally among all research universities on the Fulbright U.S. Student Program list. Reported recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education, UNC and Rutgers University at New Brunswick both had 19 student recipients for the year.
Universities ranked ahead of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill include Harvard, Princeton and Yale. In all, 600 colleges and universities accounted for 1,700 student Fulbright recipients.
The grants, which cover travel and monthly stipends, send students abroad to help improve U.S. relations with other countries at the grassroots level. The students and recent graduates, chosen for academic merit and leadership potential, study, teach or conduct research while abroad and look for solutions to international concerns.
UNC-Chapel Hill issued an announcement in Fall 2014 about the 19 students awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants for the academic year—the highest number awarded to UNC students and recent alumni.
The Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State and is administered at UNC by the Center for Global Initiatives. Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 300,000 participants with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.
Applications for 2015-2016 are currently under review, and the competition for 2016-2017 will open later this spring with a Fall 2015 deadline. Interested students should check cgi.unc.edu/Fulbright for the most current information.
Published March 9, 2015.