the app cycle is in october deadline, and you hear in feb if you got it. some countries have teaching grants, which I have, which have altogether different deadlines and you apply directly to the country, and not thru the American FB commission.
Without writing a novel, basically my teaching grant is to Austria and I turned down the scholarship to do this bc you can renew it for up to 2 years,the deadline for my position wasin Feb and you heard in April.
Your uni study abroad office should have a person on campus whose job it is to help you apply for a FB, as well as a committee to interview you and help you improve your proposal (which is for a unique project you have to figure out on your own, choose a uni or instutite inteh host country, contact them independently, and get them to write you a letter saying they will let you study with them, and saying they think the project is a good idea, etc) I went to UT Austin and our campus committee was great, all faculty volunteering their time to help us. No cuts are made at the campus level, they just help yuo and tell you their honest opinion of your project, proposal, and chances.
You had better hope your campus has their poo together too, bc the year I applied, one of the Cali schools submitted their entire campus apps a day late, due to a prob with their internal mail service, after collecting them all from students, and the NYC fb office said forget it. It was a huge scandal in the FB world that year and all the students from that school were furious bc it wasn't their fault, but the National NYC FB office still said forget it, all the other campuses managed to get theirs in on time, etc, and NO ONE from that Cali campus was considered that year....I don't remember which school it was though. I remember feeling badly for them bc putting together that FB app was the single hardest thing I did in undergrad outside of school itself, I worked and worked and worked on it for months and months and months starting in AUGUST.
After the campus committee interviews you, they forward ALL the apps to the US FB Commission in NYC, where they cut a ton of apps and forward the rest to the host countries. You will not hear anything till Feb 1 regardless of when you get cut, and you will never know why bc it is their policy not to tell.
APPLYING FOR A FULBRIGHT IS A HUGE GIGANTIC PAIN IN THE REAR END. I advise you to have a kick ass proposal before you even bother. And apply to a country where you have a chance, not Great Britain bc they have 400 apps a year for 20 grants, of France bc they are very popular. Also any English speaking country is very hard to get, bc the level of foreign lang competence in the US tends to be rather dreadful but people do want to go abroad, they just don't realize how limited they are.
SOOOO, google fulbright grants, and e sure you are on the right page from the State Dept bc there are tons of different ones, and you want the one for a post bacc student, not a professor or a grad student,etc etc.
ANd one final word of advice: I do know that the rec letters are supposed to be from people in the field who comment on THE PROJECT, NOT ON YOU. FB is unique in this respect, they do not want to read a bunch of letters like med school letters, talking about how you are the most wonderful little darling gracing the earth with your presence, but rather about THE PROJECT and why it needs to be done now, in that country, and by you.
There is a good chance that if you are rejected, it is bc someone else inrecent years already did a project similiar to yours, they don't think the proposal is coherent, they don't think the project can be done by one person on one year, etc etc, and has nothing to do with you, as I am sure you are a precious darling and the earth is infinitely graced by your presence!!
And politically correct proposals go a lot farther, I would imagine. A friend of mine had an outstanding proposal for France that was extremely sympathetic to Arab journalists, and she didn't get it. Maybe it had already been done, or maybe its not hip to be sympathetic to Arab journalists in France, you decide.
Ok that is the novel I set out not to write, hope someone learns something from it....
Good luck and realize this is a HUGE undertaking that could leave you VERY disappointed bc of all the work involved.....but it is also the chance of a lifetime!
Anna