HERE’S WHAT YOU WILL NEED TO CREATE

Okay, here’s where things get really interesting.

Like we’ve said before, transcripts and résumés are useful sources of information, but limited. Letters of recommendation help, but only show us the perspective of other people. We find it most useful to learn about our candidates by asking them to create.

Accordingly, as part of our application, we require you to create three original works. These three works are designed to help us learn more about three different facets of you as a potential Fellow: 1) your professional and academic interests, 2) your fundamental character and personal interests, and 3) your service and community mindset. The more we learn about you through your application, the better!

In addition to focusing on three different aspects of you, these three original works should come in three different formats, as a way to better show off your full range of skills and interests.

Formats for Original Works: Short essay, long essay, multimedia

One of these works will be a short essay of approximately 250 words. In addition to telling us whatever you want to tell us with the content of your response to the prompt, this format will help us see how you can quickly, concisely, and clearly convey a key message – an important job skill for any career.

Another will be a longer essay of approximately 750 words. Again, in addition to the important content of your essay, this long essay form will help us see how you organize your thoughts around more complex topics and discussions.

The final work will be something we've named the 'multimedia essay' – which means it will take essentially any format that isn't a written prose essay. Please feel free to choose the media that best reflects you, your interests, and your talents. Past Fellows have submitted poems, animations, written works of fiction, spoken word pieces, songs, graphic designs, comic books, and video monologues. We would, of course, love to be surprised. Please make sure whatever you send us is in a format that our selection committee members will be able to access without needing special software or a password to access — and trust us, life will be much, much easier for all of us if you keep the file size for your submissions below 250 MB.

Multimedia essay limitations: For the multimedia essay, the only limitations we have are the following: we cannot accept physical submission via snailmail or any other means; no software that isn’t more or less universally and freely available should be required to review your submission; and a member of our selection committee or a hiring manager at one of our Host Institutions must be able to review your submission within a five-minute window.

New to our application process this year, we are allowing you to decide which format to use for which submission. We need one short essay, one long essay, and one multimedia essay from you. Those should include one work focused on your professional interests, one work focused on your character and personal interests, and one work on your community and service mindset. How you mix and match those is up to you.

Here are some random examples of what you might choose: