College of Business : Scholarship Detail : George J. Mitchell Postgraduate Scholarship
George J. Mitchell Postgraduate Scholarship
http://www.us-irelandalliance.org/wmspage.cfm?parm1=442
The deadline for the 2009 application is Monday, October 5th, Midnight, Eastern Daylight Time, for study to commence in 2010.
I. Eligibility
Applicants for the 2010-2011George J. Mitchell Scholarship must:
-Be U.S. citizens.
-Be 18 years of age or older but not yet 30 on October 1, 2009.
-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 are required 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, EDT, Monday, October 5, 2009. The application consists of 5 sections: Personal Information; Education and Employment; Registration of Recommenders/Institutional Endorser; Awards and Activities; and Personal Statement. All sections must be completed before the applicant can submit the application. The Mitchell Scholarship program only accepts online applications. No printed copies of the application, including letters of recommendation, will be accepted. 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 in this section at least three and up to five specific proposed graduate programs at universities in Ireland and/or Northern Ireland. It is essential that applicants list at least three different Irish/Northern Ireland university choices. Listing only one or two university choices will significantly weaken an applicant’s candidacy. This is because university placement is a factor in the selection process.
It is important that applicants spend sufficient time examining the various programs at the different Irish/Northern Ireland universities in order to determine which programs they are most interested in and qualified for. Applicants are not required to apply to the Irish/Northern Ireland University 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 the degree residence requirements at the universities because master’s programs can be for one or two years. The Mitchell Scholarship provides tuition, housing, and living expenses stipend for one year only. Applicants also must have sufficient undergraduate preparation for each proposed graduate program, and should carefully review the prerequisites for the academic program.
III. Supporting Documents
The following supporting documents must be received by our office no later than Monday, October 5th, 2009. The documents should be sent to the US-Ireland Alliance, George J. Mitchell Scholarship Program, 2800 Clarendon Boulevard, #502 West, Arlington, Virginia 22201:
-ONE photocopy of the applicant’s birth certificate, passport, or documented evidence of U.S. citizenship (a driver’s license is NOT a citizenship document).
-TEN passport-sized photos of unmounted head and shoulders photograph of the applicant with the applicant’s signature on the back of each photo.
-TEN copies of the applicant’s college transcript. The ORIGINAL must be certified by the Registrar or other responsible university official. The remaining nine copies may be photocopies. If an applicant has attended more than one university, all transcripts must be submitted.
THE ABOVE DOCUMENTS MUST BE REACHED BY THE MITCHELL SCHOLARSHIP OFFICE NO LATER THAN MONDAY, OCTOBER 6th 2008
IV. Online Letters of Recommendation
All applicants are required to provide exactly 5 letters of recommendation utilizing the online recommendation system contained within the online application. Applicants register recommenders online and must provide the email address of the recommender. Once registered, each recommender will receive an email with a login user name and password in order to submit the recommendation online. University email controls may necessitate some follow-up on the part of applicants to ensure that their registered advisors receive and process the emails from our system. We encourage applicants to follow up with the recommenders to make sure the email instructions have been received.
Of the five letters of recommendation, at least three must be from persons with whom the applicant has done academic work at a college or university, IF YOU ARE A FULL-TIME STUDENT. Applicants who have not been full-time students in the current or past academic year are required to provide only two letters of recommendation from an academic with whom they have studied. .
Recommenders without email capability may be registered with a colleague’s email address, although one email address can be used for only one recommendation. Recommenders can enter a recommendation directly into the application form or upload it from his/her computer. Once the recommender submits the recommendation and confirms that the work is authentic, he/she should receive an email confirming that the recommendation was received.
Letters of recommendation should comment on the 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.
For Full Time Students Only – Online Institutional Endorsement
An applicant who is a full-time student at the time of application must submit an institutional endorsement. Applicants must be endorsed by an institution where they will have completed two years of full-time study before October 1 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 year of graduate school should request an endorsement from their undergraduate institution. The Mitchell Scholarship program will accept Institutional Endorsements from the university president, dean or other administrative official responsible for graduate fellowships. The letter of endorsement should describe the on-campus university selection or review process of prospective candidates, if applicable.
If applicants are not full-time students at the time of application, no institutional endorsement is required.
Please note that all online materials for the candidate’s Mitchell Scholarship application must be submitted no later than Midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Monday, October 5, 2009. The online application will be closed down at that time and no late submissions will be 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 thoroughly enforced. There are no exceptions.
V. Fellowship Advisor Registration (Optional)
The applicant is presented with the opportunity to register a fellowship advisor. This is completely optional. If the applicant would like a fellowship advisor to view the application before it is submitted to the Mitchell Scholarship office, the applicant must register the advisor in this section. The applicant can register the advisor at any time, up until the application is submitted. To register the fellowship advisor, the applicant must provide the advisor’s email address. The advisor will then receive an email with the login information needed to access the application. If an advisor is registered by more than one student applying for a Mitchell Scholarship, the advisor will receive login information for each applicant. NB: The advisor will have the ability to VIEW BUT NOT EDIT the application online.
University email controls may necessitate some follow-up on the part of applicants to ensure that their registered advisors receive and process the emails from our system. We encourage applicants to follow up with the registered advisor to make sure the email instructions have been received.
VI. Criteria
George J. Mitchell Scholarship applicants are judged on three criteria:
-Academic excellence and intellectual distinction. Although the Scholarship 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.
-An outstanding record of leadership.
-A sustained commitment to service and community.
VII. Selection Process
The annual task of identifying 12 Americans who best satisfy these criteria involves several steps. Initially, a team of Readers evaluates the applications, based on an extensive amount of material available to them, including the application itself, letters of recommendation, personal statement, and academic transcript. Following the evaluations by the Readers, roughly 30 semi-finalists are selected, some of whom will be invited to Washington, DC for semi-finalist interviews. Approximately twenty finalists are brought to Washington, DC for interviews by the Selection Committee. Final interviews will be held this year on Friday and Saturday, November 20th and 21st.
The Selection Committee consists of members with varied academic and professional backgrounds.
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 a 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 Mitchell Scholarship, the Mitchell office then forwards the candidate’s application to the assigned Irish/Northern Ireland university for final acceptance. No Irish/Northern Ireland university has ever rejected a Mitchell Scholar’s application.
Because the Mitchell program has only 20 national finalists for 12 awards, we expect that a finalist is committed to accepting the Mitchell Scholarship if offered. Because there are many outstanding applicants, we will only interview those candidates who declare their commitment to the Mitchell Scholarship if invited to be a finalist.
