Applying from abroad

Ideally, you will have begun the process of identifying a question and finding a mentor before you leave campus to study overseas. Even if you do not have a specific question in mind, it is worth your while to attend the proposal writing workshop sponsored by the Dean?s office and approach potential mentors in your last semester on campus.

Practically, many students first become interested in the honors program while they are studying abroad. If you fall into this category, do not despair. Many successful honors candidates have applied from abroad in the past. 

Here are some obstacles you may encounter, with suggestions about how to overcome them:

• Lack of resources for preliminary research.
  If your site has limited library resources, consider
  • Using the internet to locate and read sources. Remember that Georgetown has online reserves, so some of the works you need may already be posted on the web;
  • Asking your professors, the program coordinator, and fellow students for ideas about other places in the area that might have the documents you need (research institutes, private collections, museums, etc.);
  • Planning to spend part of your vacation in a location with the library resources you need;
  • Asking friends at Georgetown to copy and mail key articles.
    
    
• Trouble contacting an appropriate mentor from abroad.

  Many professors do not respond to e-mail or fax inquiries as quickly as students wish they would. Before you write to a professor you have never met:

  • Try to develop a list of potential research questions (see ?defining the question?);
  • Read the professor?s own work on the topic;
  • Identify sources you have at hand and those you will have when you return to Georgetown.

  You can increase your chances of receiving a helpful and timely response if you frame your initial message to a potential mentor with care. Essentially, you need to show that you have already given your thesis some thought, and you now need specific help from the professor:

  • Introduce yourself and explain why you are writing and how you discovered that this professor might be the right mentor for your project.
  • Outline your research question(s) and the reasoning behind them. If you know your proposed project will require special skills (language ability, experience with statistics, etc.) make sure to tell the professor that you possess them. If you have already drafted a proposal, include it.
  • Describe briefly the research you have already done.
  • Ask for specific information. Are there enough resources in Washington to complete this project? Has this question already been answered in the literature? Would it be better to approach this question from another angle? Does the professor have colleagues at Georgetown or at your overseas site who might be helpful?
  • Explain the timeline ? ask if the professor could get back to you in a given time frame. You may want to offer to call the professor during office hours if a personal conversation would be more useful than an e-mail exchange. If you have only a few weeks to develop your proposal, acknowledge that you are starting late, and ask whether the professor would be able to read a draft and provide comments soon enough for you to submit the final proposal on time.
  • Do not expect the professor to agree to be your mentor until you have given him or her an actual proposal.
• Difficulties finding materials you need to do revisions
  In many cases, students applying from abroad have to leave gaps in their proposals because they cannot access the materials they need ? they don?t have a way to view the films they might want to use, or the relevant sources are only available in the Library of Congress, or they haven?t yet interviewed enough subjects to know how useful their comments will be. 

  If this is the case with your project, give as much information as you can in your revised proposal (your mentor has suggested these five films, secondary works show that the primary sources you have not been able to access will answer your question, the few interviews you have done have yielded promising results, etc.) 

  In addition, show that you have a plan for filling the gaps before you begin your research in the fall semester, and state your willingness to work with your mentor to modify your project if your plans do not work out.