$99

Ultimate Fulbright Guide (Open Study, Research, English Teaching Assistant Award)

Buy this

Ultimate Fulbright Guide (Open Study, Research, English Teaching Assistant Award)

$99

Currently pre-sale until August 20, 2025

Note: All the materials that you will need to get started are already here. My team and I will be completing the rest of the sections leading up to August 20.

*If you are applying for multiple fellowships including the Fulbright, you should purchase the Ultimate National Fellowship Guide, which will also include the contents below.


The Ultimate Fulbright Guide

For more than a decade, I have advised, supported, and helped hundreds of applicants win Fulbrights along with other national fellowships like the Rhodes, Marshall, and Schwarzman scholarships. This guide takes all of these experiences and offers step-by-step insight with the exact language and content that have helped so many students and recent graduates win a Fulbright. While it is statistically easier to win a Fulbright, the decade of varied experiences across all of these fellowship applications offers nuanced and highly specific tips to help increase your chances of winning.

A Fulbright grant (Open Study / Research Award or English Teach Assistant Award) can offer the perfect transition towards a post-graduate career or an amazing mid-career experience. The English Teaching Assistant Award is less flexible in your day-to-day life abroad, while the Research award gives you the opportunity to shape your year in the way you would like. Both are very well known programs to future employers, elite graduate programs, and can help you become more competitive for the next stages of your professional life.

I'm YJ (Yongjun) Heo, and I was awarded three national fellowships (Fulbright, Luce Scholars Program, and George Mitchell Scholarship). I have advised dozens of national fellowship winners over the last decade, including my younger brother, who was a Schwarzman Scholar. I have directly helped students and recent graduates win the Rhodes, Mitchell, Marshall, Fulbright, Schwarzman, Gates Cambridge, Luce, Rangel, Watson, and others. As a product designer, I created and maintain the application system for a well-known national fellowship. Hundreds of college students and recent graduates have asked me for resources to help them apply, and I'm consolidating and sharing as much as I can here and on nationalfellowship.com and nationalfellowships.com. By coincidence, life circumstances, and direct experiences, I believe I know more about these programs than almost anyone else, and I want you to learn everything that I have learned here.

Over the last few cycles, I've had dozens of winners for most of the above national fellowships. The guide itself covers (likely) 60-80% of everything I know. That last 20-40% is more tailored to your individual candidacy, and you'd get the full "100%" if you also speak with me directly throughout the process. If you want a review of your application materials via voice memo you can find that here: https://docreview.app/yj. If you want to speak with me one-on-one you can schedule a video call through https://cal.com/yj.



How This Guide Can Help You

I am taking everything I did to win multiple national fellowships, everything I did to help friends and those I've mentored win dozens of national fellowships, and everything I did to help my younger brother win a Schwarzman Scholarship, and I'm putting it here in this guide.

While this guide is meant specifically for the Fulbright programs, if you are interested in applying to Fulbright and some other national fellowships, you should purchase the Ultimate National Fellowship Guide here: https://nationalfellowship.gumroad.com/l/guide (this includes Fulbright + Others).

While some national fellowship winners are, in fact, geniuses (who are difficult to compete against), most winners are not prodigies (my younger brother and I are also not geniuses. Sorry, Jason). The majority of those who win A. are relatively intelligent, B. work extremely hard, C. plan ahead enough, D. market themselves effectively, and E. prepare themselves for interviews effectively. I am here to help you through this guide with some of B, C, D, and E ('planning ahead enough' can help you with B).

Even though Fulbrights are easier to win than other national fellowships, your chances of winning are highly dependent also on the country to which you apply. This guide is meant to give you more than a decades worth of insight and hopefully can help you increase your chances of winning. Of course, winning is not guaranteed, but I can help you avoid critical errors that have sunken the candidacies of those who reached out to me too late in the process, executed tenuous strategies, or lacked enough background information to plan correctly. I not only want to help you learn from others' mistakes, but I also want to help you elevate others' impression and interpretations of you for any type of application.

The guide should help you understand how these programs may judge your candidacy, but with a much higher degree of specificity than you would get anywhere else. The guide does not hold back. My goal is to help you develop higher levels of self-awareness, which will, in turn, improve your ability to make immediate corrections. While these experiences can be absolutely life-changing, you also have a long, professional life ahead. Along with helping you through this national fellowship application process, my ultimate goal for this guide is that its contents can help you far beyond this year.


What's Included

  1. Introduction. This is where I share updates and background about the Fulbright Guide.
  2. Strategy & Planning. Which program should you select and in which country?
  3. Fulbright + Others. Fulbright is one of several programs... are you intelligently strategizing to maximize outcomes?
  4. Winning Characteristics. What type of person wins, and how much do these characteristics matter versus the quality of your application?
  5. Winning Personal Statements & Examples. These are the winning statements that have helped about one hundred of my students win Fulbrights. The structure here is key. Follow the guidelines and annotations to craft your own story.
  6. Affiliation Letter. For some programs you need an excellent letter of affiliation to support your work.
  7. Resume or CV. While you might not need to upload a separate CV or resume within the application portal, you will need a great resume to land the right affiliation and get the best possible recommendations. Here is a template and write up for how to improve your materials.
  8. Recommendations. This is the second big hurdle to pass before you are considered for final reviews. Here I will explain, show, and provide examples for how to get the best potential recommendations. Candidates always underestimate how much control they have over their recommendations.
  9. Recommendation Package. This has its own section because you also underestimate how important it is to 'package your candidacy' appropriately for your recommenders. You need to 'make it easy' for them for the exact moment that they're writing your recommendation. How do you do that?
  10. Through-School vs. At-large. Fulbright allows you to apply through the school or not. What factors should you consider with either approach?
  11. Fellowship Office/Advisor. They are the gatekeepers of some of these fellowships, but many might not know the best strategies. This is how you can approach and work with them to reduce the chance that they filter you out of programs for which you might otherwise be a great candidate.
  12. Final Application Checklist. You have one chance this year to get it right. You can review your contents and make sure you are putting your best foot forward.


*disclaimer: I'm a designer-entrepreneur who also runs MWDL, a web design and product development company (https://midwestdesignlab.com). MWDL built and manages the George Mitchell Scholarship application system. I do not assess, select, or weigh in on any application. This documentation or any advice that I offer does not guarantee your winning a national fellowship. However, I believe that the mere act of going through the process will help you develop a plan for the next steps in your life, which can ultimately be helpful.



Buy this

This is a pre-sale for the 2025 Fulbright Guide. This includes detailed information that can help improve your chances of winning a Fulbright grant. The guide is based on 10+ years of advising Fulbright applicants with a 60-80% success rate.

No refunds allowed

If you're not completely satisfied with your purchase, contact me within a week and let me know what didn't meet your expectations. I want to reduce the possibility of those who might buy and extract information before requesting a refund so I have these policies set as the default.

Last updated Jul 28, 2025