Frequently Asked Questions

All applications must be submitted through the Society of Fellows application portal.

Previous applicants who meet the eligibility criteria may submit a new application each year through the portal.

No. The application deadline is firm. Late applications will not be accepted.

Please select the academic department(s) with which you would expect to be affiliated at the University of Michigan. This is typically the department of your Ph.D. and/or a department in which you are qualified to teach. A complete list of departments accepting applications is available under the Host Department section of the FAQ page.

Minimum font size 11 and standard 1″ margins.

No. You may use any citation style, provided it is applied clearly and consistently throughout your materials.

No. Cover letters are not included as part of the application materials.

No. Once applications are submitted, changes can no longer be made.

Once the online application has been successfully submitted, the applicant will receive an email confirming receipt.

Please contact [email protected] if you have any questions regarding the status of your application or did not receive a confirmation email after submitting the online application.

Late applications will not be accepted.

Question: After submitting my application, I received the following warning message: “Thank you for submitting your Michigan Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Fellowship Application. As a reminder, the deadline to submit your letters of recommendation is one week following the application deadline, or Monday, September 22, 2025, at 11:59 PM EDT. Applications with missing letters of recommendation as of 12:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, September 23, 2025, will be marked as incomplete and will be considered ineligible. You will receive an auto-generated email once these items have been received.”

Answer: The deadline to submit letters of recommendation is one week following the application deadline. Your application IS considered complete if all other materials have been submitted by the application deadline. If the letters of recommendation are not received by the September 22 deadline, your application will be considered ineligible. You will receive an automated email message once your letters of recommendation have been submitted to the system.

No. The dates (between June 1, 2024 and August 30, 2027) are firm. No exceptions to this eligibility criterion will be made.

Yes.

The Society of Fellows welcomes international scholars to apply to the fellowship. The Society of Fellows will normally pursue J-1 status for its international postdocs who require sponsorship. Sponsorship of other immigration statuses (including H-1B status) is rare and will require a policy exception.

International applicants who have just earned their degrees in the United States will be expected to take advantage of J-1 Academic Training (AT) or any F-1 Optional Practical Training (OPT) time (including STEM OPT), if available.

The Society of Fellows will work with the International Center to pursue the relevant immigration status and employment authorization sponsorship, as needed, if F-1 OPT or J-1 AT are not available to an individual applicant.

Yes.

All applicants for the Arts Initiative Fellowship must hold an MFA or comparable terminal degree in the arts, earned within the required eligibility period. Applicants who meet this criterion are welcome to apply, including those who also hold a Ph.D.; however, a Ph.D. alone does not qualify an applicant for this fellowship. The eligible terminal degree must be clearly based in creative practice, and the applicant’s submitted work must be suitable for creative review.

No. Applicants are required to obtain a Ph.D. or comparable professional or artistic terminal degree in order to apply. Applicants for the Arts Initiative Fellowship must hold an MFA or comparable terminal degree in the arts within the required eligibility period.

Yes. All application materials must be submitted in English.

Yes.

Yes. Please note that all visual elements must include image descriptions or alt text.

No. The page limit does not apply to citation pages.

The page limit is 20, single-spaced pages for a mix of published and unpublished work.

When submitting a writing sample for a poetry application, please use your best judgment, knowing our page limit for prose.

Writing/work samples that include visual elements (graphs, charts, images, etc.) are allowed to exceed the page limit. When you submit your writing/work sample on the application portal, an alert will be triggered that requires you to explain why your sample exceeds the page limit. The system will hinder submission of any sample exceeding an absolute maximum of 40 pages.

Please note that all visual elements must include image descriptions or alt text.

No. There is only a page limit – 40, double-spaced pages for unpublished work; 20, single-spaced pages for published work.

Most postdocs in the humanities and social sciences (who are in book-based fields) work mainly on transforming their dissertation into a book while also doing smaller-scale writing and editing projects. Some set their dissertations aside and commence researching an entirely new topic. Both can be excellent approaches. It is therefore generally helpful to read a description of your current questions and how they fit within, or innovate upon, your field(s) and to know your own sense of what needs to come next in your research trajectory.

Question: The general piece of advice that I received from my advisors is to send something from my dissertation so that the reviewers can see the quality of the work, which is soon going to be turned into a book. However, I also received the suggestion to send something closer to my second project, especially for positions that only require a writing sample.

Response: Ideally, your proposal would be drawn from the project you hope to pursue as a fellow and would be accessible to readers outside your discipline.

No. The page limit does not apply to references. Your research proposal/artistic plan will be accepted if it exceeds the 3-page limit strictly due to reference pages.

The deadline to submit letters of recommendation is 11:59 PM (EDT) on Monday, September 21, 2026 (one week following the application deadline).

Yes. Please make sure that your dossier contains no more than two letters of recommendation.

No. Letters of recommendation submitted after the deadline (one week after the application deadline) will not be accepted.

Yes. Letters of recommendation may be sent as a PDF file to [email protected].

After logging into the application portal, scroll down to the title “2 Letters of Recommendation”. Click on the blue “request letters of recommendation” button. Under the title “Method 1,” you will see an option to enter recommender information. You are welcome to update the recommender information at any time.

If you still have trouble updating the recommender information in the application portal, please follow the instructions under the title “Method 2” on the application portal, which includes important information to share with a recommender if you contact them directly.

After saving the recommender information in the application portal, you will be prompted with an opportunity to send the email request to the recommender via email. You may also contact your recommender directly. More information on what to share with your recommender is listed on the “Letters of Recommendation” page of the application portal, under “Method 2”.

This information is included under “Method 2” of the “Letters of Recommendation” page of the application portal.

Letters of recommendation will be accepted via the application portal through 11:59 PM (EDT) on Monday, September 21, 2026.

If the recommender is having difficulty with the application portal, letters of recommendation will also be accepted via email at [email protected] by the same deadline. Please note that these letters must be uploaded manually. Letters received via the application portal or email by the deadline will be accepted.

To confirm if your letters of recommendation have been submitted via email by the deadline, please contact your recommender(s) directly.

Applicants will receive an auto-generated email notification when a letter has been successfully uploaded to the portal and attached to the applicant’s application.

Letters of recommendation sent via email must be submitted manually. As such, there may be a delay in receiving this notification until the letter has been processed and uploaded into the system. To confirm if your letters of recommendation have been submitted via email by the deadline, please contact your recommender(s) directly.

Letters of recommendation submitted via the application portal, whether by the recommender or manually by the MSF administration, will generate an auto-email to the applicant notifying them of the submission.

Letters of recommendation emailed to the [email protected] email account must be loaded manually. If the letter was received via email by the deadline, it will be accepted. Please allow the administration 5 business days to enter this information manually before it is reflected in the system.

To confirm if your letters of recommendation have been submitted via email by the deadline, please contact your recommender(s) directly.

No. All letters of recommendation must be submitted electronically, either through the application portal or via email to [email protected] as a PDF file.

No. The first two letters of recommendation submitted on your behalf will be attached to your application.

Letters of recommendation cannot be changed/updated after they have been submitted.

No. Letters of recommendation cannot be changed/updated after they have been submitted.

Yes. Fellows are expected to be “in residence” or living in the Ann Arbor area during the academic year (September through May) for all three years of their fellowship tenure.

No. Fellows are expected to be “in residence” or living in the Ann Arbor area, whether they are teaching or not.

Off-campus research leave during academic terms will be permitted only in rare cases, only for brief periods, and only upon written application to the Chair of the Society well in advance of the proposed leave.

The U-M Standard Practice Guide Policy 201.19 Section II.D.8 details the leaves available to Fellows. For questions on leave eligibility and availability, Fellows should work with their academic unit chair and unit HR.

No. Any leaves taken during the fellowship will be counted as part of the fellowship.

The teaching requirement for fellows varies across departments. Typically, fellows have the opportunity to design and teach their own courses; however, depending on departmental needs (i.e., faculty leaves, sabbaticals, etc.), fellows may be asked to teach a specific course by their department. This is usually addressed during the offer phase of the process.

Please try the following troubleshooting steps:

1. Clear your browser’s cache and cookies.
2. Close the browser completely, then reopen it and log in again.
3. Make sure cookies and JavaScript are enabled.
4. Allow each page to load fully before navigating to another section, particularly if you have a slower internet connection.

If the issue continues after completing these steps, please contact us for further assistance.

The site has been tested to work with all the major browsers (Edge, Firefox, Chrome, iOS Safari, OS X Safari). Clear your browser cache/contents, close, and then re-open to a fresh start to see if this resolves the issue.

The full list of departments will become available on August 1 each year.

For the 2026-2027 fellowship competition, the following departments are accepting applications:

• Aerospace Engineering
• Afroamerican & African Studies (DAAS)
• Anthropology – Biological
• Anthropology – Linguistic
• Asian Languages & Cultures (ALC)
• Astronomy
• Biophysics
• Biostatistics
• Business
• Chemistry
• Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE)
• Climate and Space Sciences & Engineering (CLaSP)
• Communications & Media
• Complex Systems
• Computer Science & Engineering (CSE)
• Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB)
• Economics
• Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)
• Creative Writing | English*
• English Language & Literature
• Environmental Health Sciences (EHS)
• Film, Television, & Media*
• Germanic Languages & Literatures (GLL)
• Health Behavior & Health Equity (HBHE)
• Health Management & Policy (HMP, Public Health)
• History
• Judaic Studies
• Linguistics
• Materials Science & Engineering
• Middle East Studies
• Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences
• Organizational Studies
• Pharmacy
• Psychology
• Romance Languages & Literatures (RLL)
• Slavic Languages & Literatures
• Statistics
• Women’s & Gender Studies

*Arts Initiative Fellowship position only

Please note that only the above departments will be accepting applications for the 2026-2027 fellowship competition. Any department not listed will not be accepting applications this year.

No. The department of Film, Television, & Media is only open to applicants applying for the Arts Initiative Fellowship position. Applicants for this department must meet the eligibility requirements for the Arts Initiative Fellowship position.

Only Biological Anthropology and Linguistic Anthropology are accepting applications for the 2026-2027 fellowship competition.

No.

Yes. New for the 2026-2027 fellowship competition year, brief virtual interviews will be conducted with the finalists in the final stage of the competition.

Applicants will be notified if they have been selected to schedule an interview after January 1.

No. For equity’s sake, meetings with the Chair of the Society, current Society members, or the Chair of your primary and/or secondary department will not be arranged with applicants.

No. For equity’s sake, on-campus visits will not be scheduled for applicants.

All applicants will be notified in writing via email. Please make sure the email address entered on your application is accurate. Please update your application profile if there are any changes to your email address or surface mail address.

We will send application status updates according to the following schedule:

• Phase 1: by November 15
• Phase 2: by January 15
• Final Decision: by March 31

Please note: Updates may be sent earlier than these dates, but you are guaranteed to receive an update no later than the date listed for each phase.

All applicants will be notified in writing of the Society’s final decision by March 31, if not earlier.

All dossier materials and the selection committee’s evaluations remain confidential. The committee is not able to provide feedback on individual applications.

After logging in, locate “Welcome, [Your Name]” near the top of the screen next to the Logout button. Directly below, you will see three options:

• Change your name
• Change your password
• Change your email address

Select “Change your email address” and follow the prompts to update your information.

If you accidentally mark your degree date wrong after submitting your application, please contact [email protected].

Once application materials have been submitted, no changes can be made. This includes any updates to your CV.