Becoming a Strong Fellowship Candidate

One way to view prestigious scholarships and fellowships is that they reward an ideal undergraduate education. While your professors and mentors at can help you design such an education, you are its true architect. With that in mind, plan to:

Strive for Excellence in Your Coursework

  • Choose courses that are challenging in your field, as well as courses that allow you to grow in knowledge outside your major.
  • In each course find something about which you can be passionate—and make that passion evident in your work.
  • Go ‘above and beyond ‘what your professors explicitly require in your written work, class participation, and preparation for each class session. Seek guidance on how to make your work exemplary in Office Hours. Remember that excellence will be reflected not only in course grades, but in how your professors think of you when they write letters of recommendation.

  • Remember that grades are not “the end of the story.” A less than perfect performance in a course, or on a given essay or exam, can be rescued by a willingness to revise the work, even when such improvements will not be reflected in your course grade. Faculty admire students whose ambitions extend beyond grades. Show that you are such a scholar.

Seek Opportunities to Know and Be Mentored By Faculty

  • Go to Office Hours. Discuss with your professors aspects of their courses or their field of study that you want to understand better, or to ask questions about how to improve upon or develop the quality of your coursework. If you produce “A” work in a course, invite your faculty to tell you what you can do to take your work to the next level of excellence. Learn about your professors’ research—by reading it, and/or by discussing it with them, even if it it’s mostly “over your head.” You will gain a greater understanding of fields in which you have an interest, and of graduate-level study generally, from dialogue with these  experts.
  • Actively seek opportunities to do research under the supervision of your professors. If you are unsure of what types of research activities are conducted in your field—ask faculty in your department. You might join an ongoing research program, or develop an independent research project of your own. Your faculty can help you refine your thinking about a project you propose in your major. Remember that Sponsored Research has comeptitive funds dedicated for student research projects. 
  • For students who study abroad, take time to cultivate relationships with faculty at the foreign college or university with whom you might want to work after your bachelor’s degree, supported by an international fellowship or scholarship.

Cultivate Relationships 

  • The way you conduct yourself has consequences for how your mentors regard you. Reliability when you make commitments and graciousness in your communications go a long way toward encouraging faculty and other mentors to have confidence in you as a mature person to be enthusiastically recommended to the academy, future employers, and fellowship foundations.
  • Work at keeping a consistent line of communitcation open outside the classroom: consider sending an appreciative follow-up email or note for a helpful reference or an insightful meeting with a professor. Remember, too, that when you ask for letters of reference, courtesy demands that you explicitly thank your recommenders after they have submitted letters on your behalf, and that you keep them informed about the status of your applications.

Expand Your Knowledge of the World

  • Enrich your perspectives on people, places, and events. Consider undertaking travel and study abroad. In researching study abroad opportunities, consider attending a “Study Abroad Information Workshop ” or meeting with a peer advisor to discuss which study abroad opportunities are a good match for a student with your profile and interests. See also the index of study abroad opportunities by major and country, as well the SUNY study abroad database. 

  • Equally important is to entertain fresh viewpoints by participating in multicultural events, attending lectures, and following the news - The Multicultural Office and the Xerox Center provide frequent campus events that celebrate diverse perspectives . 

  • Read scholarly and professional journals in your field of interest. To find the top journals in your field, consult with your faculty for recommendations, and then consult a librarian for how to gain access to these journals. Journals in your field may be accessible on our library’s website. Ensure that journals you are consulting are ‘peer reviewed’ or ‘refereed’ academic journals. Your faculty will be able to verify this, as would a reference librarian in your field.

Conduct Research in Your Field

  • Whether you are working on an independent research project or as part of a team, as a researcher you are positioned to be an active contributor to knowledge in your field, rather than merely a recipient of knowledge. In the process of conducting research and writing about your ideas and findings, you will gain an understanding of your field and its methods far and above what you could gain by classroom experience alone.
  • Consult with your faculty for research opportunities at Geneseo and elsewhere. If an article or program of research sparks your interest, find an academic on campus or at a nearby campus such as RIT, University of Rochester or Buffalo who does similar work and contact them. Geneseo has students who collaborate with local faculty in large-scale research labs or virtually through the COPLAC Distance Mentoring program, which has paired several Geneseo students with professors from across the country to create highly celebrated and successful projects across disciplines. 

Gain Experience

  • Fellowship boards want to know that you not only have an interest, but that you are doing something about it. Intern, work, or volunteer to gain experience in your field. Give generously of your time to support public service or volunteer programs dedicated to addressing social problems or needs about which you care most. Think about what you can do beyond “lending a hand,” and dedicate time to doing it. Start looking for such experiences now and plan to spend your summers productively. 
  • Some universally-applicable first steps: attend an Internship Workshop to find out how current students employ their interests or visit the Volunteer Center and learn how students service the community. Design your experiences to be rigorous by investing significant time in them, frequently seeking feedback from supervisors about your performance, and capping your experience with a paper or project that you can use to integrate your practicum with your coursework to demonstrate your learning. 

Be, In Your Own Way, a Leader

  • Work to improve the world beyond the classroom: Make meaningful contributions to your campus through personal initiatives and extracurricular activities. Don't be detered by pop culture notions of leadership and power; leadership is a skill, not a personality. Attend Geneseo Opportunities for Leadership Development (GOLD) seminars to develop the leader in you. GOLD offers an authoratitative list of leadership opportunities on campus as well.
  • If you're not sure where to start out of Geneseo's 300+ student organizations, consider joining the student-run clubs dedicated for your major, which are often supervised and work closely with faculty. Early involvement can allow students to be highly visible in the Department before they have even taken classes with professors, serving as a another platform to allow students to benefit from mentorship outside the classroom. Seek recognition for your group's contributions to campus through annual SA Awards for student organization, individual members and volunteer efforts. 
  • If a service or program or does not yet exist to address a need you see, consider developing one that will. Seek out professors and other mentors to help you think through how to implement your goals. Convince likeminded folks to help. Consider fundraising or applying for scholarships to fund your initiatives. 

Submit to Undergraduate Conferences and Journals

  • Prior recognition by editorial boards that vet the caliber of scholarship (will affirm your sense of personal excellence and) will enhance your profile in the eyes of foundation selection committees. Working to improve your research for submission to such journals will also have salutary effects on your writing. A quintessential experience for every ambitious Geneseo student, regardless of major or goal, is to submit and present at GREAT Day.
  • Sponsored Research also offers competitive travel stipends annually to fund students' attendance at conferences and scholarship; conferences provide a forum for students to network with professionals in their field, communicate their research to peers and established experts in their discipline. and a school-sponsored trip. Did you know that Geneseo has its own journal publication, "The Proceedings of GREAT Day", a dedicated forum to demonstrate undergraduate's achievements?
  • Another chance to have your writing widely read and recognitzed is through Essay Competitions for students, such as the The David J. Prior COPLAC Award, which was awarded to graduating Geneseo students from 2012-2014.

Develop Your Communication Skills

  • The most prestigious national fellowships frequently interview their finalists. Practice through a mock interview at Career Development and GOLD seminars which develop skills in presentation, listening, and negoitiation. Your courses in the liberal arts tradition will enhance your critical thinking and formulas for constructing effective arguments to prepare for you interviews.
  • The skills you gain will help you develop strong fellowship essays—and, if your fellowship application process requires an interview, will help equip you to speak effectively about your ideas.