Mitchell Scholars Program Application Procedures, Class of '12

The deadline for the Class of '12 competition is Tuesday, 5 October 2010, Midnight (11:59pm), Eastern Time, for study to commence in 2011.

I. Eligibility

Applicants for the 2011-2012 Mitchell Scholars program must:

Be U.S. citizens.
Be 18 years of age or older but not yet 30 on 1 October 2010.
Have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university before beginning study as a Mitchell Scholar.
While married applicants are accepted, no allowance is made for the expenses of a married applicant’s spouse or dependent. It is important to note that spouses who are non-EU citizens may be required to be enrolled full-time and prove financial resources for the year or to obtain a work permit before seeking paid employment in Ireland or Northern Ireland.

II. Application

Each applicant must submit the online application no later than Midnight, Eastern Time, Tuesday, 5 October 2010. The application consists of five sections: Personal Information; Education and Employment; Registration of Recommenders/Institutional Endorser; Awards and Activities; and Personal Statement. All applicants must respond to all sections of the application before it can be submitted. Only upon receving all an applicant's materials, as well as all required letters of endorsement and support will an application be considered complete. The Mitchell Scholars program only accepts online applications. No printed copies of the application, including letters of recommendation, will be accepted; unsolicted hard-copy materials sent to the office will be destroyed to protect confidentiality.

The applicant should devote careful thought to the essay, which should describe the applicant’s field of interest and the justification for the applicant’s proposed study in Ireland or Northern Ireland. Selection committee members will place special emphasis on the personal statement. The essay should not exceed 1000 words and should be written clearly. The applicant must certify on the online application that the essay is his or her own work.

The applicant is responsible for researching and listing at least three specific proposed graduate programs at three different universities in Ireland and/or Northern Ireland. It is essential that applicants list at least three different university choices. Listing only one or two university choices will significantly weaken an applicant’s candidacy. University placement may be a factor in the selection process.

It is important that applicants spend sufficient time examining the various programs at universities in Ireland and Northern Ireland to determine the programs in which they are most interested and for which they are qualified. Applicants are not required to apply to a university in Ireland or Northern Ireland directly in order to apply for the Mitchell. Information about higher education in Ireland and Northern Ireland can be found at the following link: Institutions of Higher Learning in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Applicants should closely examine degree residence requirements because master’s programs can be one or two years in duration. The Mitchell Scholars program provides tuition, housing, and cash stipend for only one year. Applicants also must have sufficient academic and professional preparation for each proposed post-graduate program, carefully reviewing prerequisites for each academic program.

III. Supporting Documents

The following supporting documents must be uploaded in the online application no later than the national deadline . Please do not send these materials in hard copy before the national deadline; any such materials sent unsolicited will be destroyed. Finalists will be asked for these materials in hard copy, and shipping details will be sent with request.

ONE electronic image file of passport-sized photo, unmounted head and shoulders, of applicant must be uploaded. The system will accept ONE pdf file in this field for each application; system does not convert to pdf format. Finalists must provide ten passport-sized, hard-copies of this image with signature on the back of the photos (upon request in advance of finalist weekend).
ONE electronic image file of the applicant's signature must be uploaded. Sign a blank paper. Scan it. Upload that file. The system will accept ONE pdf file in this field for each application; system does not convert to pdf format. Finalists will be required to sign the back of their photos submitted in hard-copy (upon request in advance of finalist weekend).
ONE electronic file containing unofficial copies of [all] an applicant's college (and graduate, when applicable) transcript[s] must be uploaded in pdf format. The system will accept ONE pdf file in this field for each application; system does not convert to pdf format. Finalists will be required to submit ONE official hard copy of all transcripts (upon request in advance of finalist weekend). ORIGINAL official transcript[s] must be certified by a Registrar or other responsible university official. Finalists must send all these materials together in ONE packet.

ONE electronic image file of an applicant's birth certificate, passport, or documented evidence of U.S. citizenship (a driver's license is NOT a citizenship document) must be available so that the candidate can provide it upon request (before the semi-final interview). Finalists must furnish hard-copy of this document (upon request in advance of finalist weekend).

IV. Online Letters of Recommendation

All applicants are required to provide five letters of recommendation using the online reference system contained within the online application. Applicants register those who are providing recommendations online and must furnish an email address for each person. Once registered, each recommender will receive an email with a login user name and password. These are necessary in order to submit a recommendation online. University and business email controls often necessitate some follow-up on the part of applicants to ensure that their registered recommenders receive and follow the process in the emails sent from our system. We encourage applicants to follow up with the recommenders to make sure the email instructions have been received, understood, and can be used. Timely receipt of letters is the responsibility of applicants, and no extensions are granted for submission of letters. Until an application is submitted, it is possible for an applicant to change recommenders who have not yet submitted letters. References are part of the application and must be present for an application to be complete; incomplete applications will not be considered.

Of the five letters of recommendation, at least three must be from persons with whom a candidate has done academic work (courses or research) at a college or university, IF YOU ARE A FULL-TIME STUDENT. Applicants who have not been full-time students in the past academic year are required to provide only two letters of recommendation from a academics with whom they have studied or done rsearch.

Recommenders without email capability may be registered with a colleague’s email address, although one email address can be used for only one recommendation for each applicant. Recommenders can enter text directly into the application form; however, it is recommended that the text be uploaded from another document and a copy of that document retained. Once a recommender submits a reference and confirms that the work is authentic, an email confirming that the reference was received is sent to a recommender's registered email address as well as to the candidate. Applicants cannot eliminate a recommender once a recommendation is submitted from that person.

Letters of reference should comment on a candidate’s general fitness for the proposed course of study. Confidential observations, negative as well as positive, on the candidate's character, integrity, generosity of spirit, intellectual distinction, leadership and commitment to service will be of great value to the selection committee in deciding which candidates should be Mitchell Scholars. By requesting these letters through the online application system, applicants are waiving their rights of access to these letters.

For Full Time Students Only – Online Institutional Endorsement

An applicant who is a full-time student at the time of application must present an institutional endorsement. Applicants must be endorsed by an institution where they will have been enrolled for two years of full-time study before 1 October of the year in which they are applying. The applicant must register an Institutional Endorsement contact using the online recommendation system contained with the online application. It is preferred that applicants in their first two years of graduate school should request an endorsement from their undergraduate institution and have recommendations from undergraduate and graduate faculty. The Mitchell Scholars program will accept Institutional Endorsements from a university president, dean, or fellowships advisor. There is normally one person so designated on each campus. Please check the "find an advisor" tool on this website to learn if your campus's nominating official has registered. It is often the same person who manages the nomination process for other major international Scholarship programs such as the Marshall, Rhodes, or Truman Scholarships. The letter of endorsement should describe the on-campus university selection or review process of prospective candidates.

If candidates are not full-time students at the time of application, no institutional endorsement is required.

Please note that all online materials for a candidate’s Mitchell Scholar application must be submitted no later than Midnight (application closes at 11:59pm), Eastern Time, Tuesday, 5 October 2010. The online application will be closed at that time, and no late submissions from applicants or recommenders are possible. The applicant is personally responsible for ensuring that referees and university administrators transmit their recommendations or endorsement on time. There is a very tight timeline for thorough review of all applications, so the deadline for application and recommendation submission is strictly enforced. There are no exceptions.

V. Fellowship Advisor Read-Only Access (Optional)

A candidate is presented with the opportunity to register a fellowship advisor who will have read-only access to the application. Granting this access is optional for competition at the national level. However, applicants seeking institutional endorsement must comply with their campus policies. If a candidate would like a fellowship advisor to view the application before it is submitted for the national selection for the Mitchell Scholars program, the candidate must register that advisor in this section. The advisor will have the ability to VIEW BUT NOT EDIT the application online. A candidate can register an advisor at any time until the application is submitted. To register a fellowship advisor, a candidate must provide the advisor’s email address. The advisor will then receive an email with login information needed to access the application. If an advisor is registered by more than one student applying to the Mitchell Scholars program, the advisor will receive login information, each with a specific password, for each candidate.

University email controls may necessitate follow-up on the part of candidates to ensure that registered advisors receive emails from our system. We encourage applicants to follow up with the registered advisor to make sure the email instructions have been received. An applicant is responsible for ensuring timely receipt of letters of endorsement.

VI. Criteria

Mitchell Scholars program candidates are judged on three criteria:

Scholarship -- Academic excellence and intellectual distinction. Although the Scholars program does not require a minimum GPA, it is understood that a prospective candidate must have the academic ability and preparation to succeed in a postgraduate program.
Leadership -- An outstanding record of leadership which may be evidenced through a variety of activities and accomplishments. These efforts may be on- or off-campus, local, regional, or global.
Commitment to Community and Public Service -- A record of and sustained commitment to service and community, on campus, locally, nationally, or internationally.

VII. Selection Process

The annual task of identifying up to twelve US citizens who best satisfy these criteria involves several steps. Initially, a team of Readers evaluates the applications, based on the extensive material available to them, including the application, letters of recommendation, personal statement, and academic transcript[s]. Following evaluation by the Readers, roughly thirty semi-finalists are selected and may be invited for semi-final interviews held via skype. Semi-finalists will be invited via email and assigned a fixed date and time for the interview. Approximately twenty finalists are then invited to Washington, DC, for interviews with the Selection Committee. Final interviews will be held on Friday and Saturday, 19 and 20 November 2010. All applicants who wish to become Mitchell Scholars must be present on both days. Travel and accommodations arrangements are made by the Mitchell Scholars program at no cost to the finalist.

The Selection Committee consists of highly successful members with varied academic and professional backgrounds and may include Scholars from previous classes.

Assignment to a university in Ireland or Northern Ireland is part of the selection process, and is, therefore, competitive. Generally, each university will accept no more than two Mitchell Scholars each year. It is essential, then, that an applicant list at least three possible university choices on the application. Although candidates often receive their first choice, this is not guaranteed. Candidates who insist on listing only one or two university choices seriously weaken their chances of being selected. Once a candidate has been offered a position in the Mitchell Scholars program and has discussed program choices with staff, the Mitchell office then forwards a candidate’s credientials to universities in Ireland and Northern Ireland for evaluation and acceptance.

Because the Mitchell program has only twenty national finalists for a maximum of twelve awards, we ask that a finalist be committed to accepting an offer from the Mitchell Scholars program if offered. Because there are many outstanding applicants, we can interview only those candidates who declare their commitment to the Mitchell Scholars program if invited to be a finalist.