Outstanding Achievements

Leigh Johnston in the Campus Center

Smith College has one of the strongest U.S. student Fulbright programs in the country. For more than a decade, Smith has ranked as one of the top 10 student Fulbright-producing colleges in the country by the U.S. Fulbright Program.

  • Between 2002 and 2018, more than 260 Smithies were offered Fulbright Fellowships.
  • Smith students have been offered Fulbright Fellowships at rates well above—and sometimes more than double—the national average (currently 22 percent, was 18 percent).
  • Between 2008 and 2018, Smith's Fulbright success rate (i.e., the ratio of Fulbright-offer winners to applicants) has been among the highest in the nation.
  • In 2016–17, the U.S. Fulbright Student Program recognized Smith as the top-producing college in the United States. Smith was the second-highest producing college in the U.S. from 2009–10 through 2015–16, and has ranked number one in some other years.
  • Since Smith's Fulbright Program was established in 2001–02, our students have been offered Fulbright Fellowships to more than 80 countries. Smithies have traveled the globe to conduct research, study, teach, and undertake artistic projects in more than half of the roughly 150 countries participating in the U.S. Student Fulbright Program—and they reach out to more new countries each year.
  • Smith students have pursued Fulbright Fellowships in more than 40 distinct fields, including agriculture, arts, biology, chemistry, economics, engineering, environmental studies, film studies, gender studies, geology, history, international relations, language and literature, mathematics, musicology, physics, political science, public health, sociology, and theater studies.
  • Each year Smith students bring to the Fulbright Program a wide range of interests, talents and expertise. In recent years, Smith students have been offered Fulbright Fellowships to teach English as a second language in countries from Peru to Germany, from South Korea and Taiwan to Colombia and Brazil. Smith Fulbrighters have examined Italian influences on the art of the Hungarian Renaissance and in Bangladesh helped develop low-cost tests to detect the virus that causes Dengue fever. Smithies have evaluated the viability of cooperatives as business models in Argentina, and they have analyzed the potential for harvesting energy from waste in Finland. They have considered how contemporary Moroccan films narrate women's identities, and they have contributed to building quantum gas microscopes in France.