Tips for a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship interview?
March 13, 2011 5:05 PM   Subscribe

Anyone have any experience with the Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship? I'm applying (this week!) and it was indicated to me that almost all applicants go through an interview process. Any tips, suggestions, ideas on how to sell myself? (Additional info: I'm a doctoral candidate in English, focusing on contemporary world literature from places of long term conflict. I've heard that literature folks are not as well received because they don't "Focus on humanitarian projects.")
posted by mrfuga0 to Education (4 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
I have a friend who is now on the scholarship in Uruguay. If you send me a message with your email, I can pass along her contact info.
posted by msk1985 at 5:21 PM on March 13, 2011


Beforehand, have a dig through all your relatives. If even one's a Rotarian, you'll likely get a polite rejection. Rotary are very careful about any potential nepotism/conflict. My sister got to interview stage, and when it came out that our grandfather had been a Rotarian, the interview ended right there with an apology.
posted by scruss at 6:13 PM on March 13, 2011


Rotarian here - yeah, they are pretty big on the humanitarian aid stuff - it's what they do. :-).

Something that might help figure out a bit of "Rotary culture" is I recently discovered that most all the back numbers of the Rotarian are online:

http://www.rotary.org/en/mediaandnews/therotarian/archives/Pages/ridefault.aspx

I think your thesis area is a dynamite tie-in with Rotary aims, however - to make that connection obvious, discuss with your interviewers about how your project could help, in however small a way, with peace and UNDERSTANDING of places outside the US.

May sound cheesy, but hey - search the Rotarian 2-3 years back and see if there are tie-ins between your work and some region covered in some article. Rotarians don't all read that magazine like it's the Bible, but we do all get it in our mailbox, and there is some presumed connection there.

I think I would try to make the theme of my interview go something like "People respond to and are more willing to help people they've heard something about - my area of study seeks to bridge our local culture with that of [regions you've studied].

You may be aware, but Rotary's #1 issue is polio. It's mostly eradicated, but the remaining tiny pockets of it in the world are in developing countries, especially those in conflict zones. The vaccine is dirt-cheap and easy to administer - it's just GETTING TO these kids that keeps it from being a slam-dunk. If you can legitimately tie any area of your work to that, that is a big deal to Rotarians.
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:22 PM on March 13, 2011 [1 favorite]


regarding scruss's issue about family of Rotary and eligibility - Some programs are open to family of Rotary, some aren't. I'm not familiar with this particular scholarship, and I couldn't figure it out from reading the app at rotary.org. Ask your sponsor, and if they say it's not open to family of Rotary, ask how close the connection would be to disqualify. Then go from there.
posted by randomkeystrike at 6:28 PM on March 13, 2011


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