Prepare & Submit Fellowship Application

Overview

Eligible applicants should allow ample time to prepare the required information and submit the online application according to the deadline.

How to prepare

Eligible applicants should follow these steps to prepare the required information prior to starting the application for the PE fellowship.

1. Update your resume or CV.
2. Gather all relevant information about your education; graduate training and skills, work and volunteer experience, publications, presentations, and grants; working papers, and honors and awards.
   1. For work experience, you should include the position title, description of your roles, responsibilities, accomplishments, location, and employment dates.
   2. For each position, include the start and end dates in MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY format, and the number of hours worked per week.
3. Write a personal statement. For your personal statement, answer the following.
   1. What influenced you to consider a career in public health service?
   2. Describe your greatest professional challenge so far and how you overcame it.
   3. Describe your use of economic or decision-analytic methods. What methods would you like to learn more about?
   4. Describe your experience related to data management and analysis, including the use of statistical software packages such as Excel, SAS, STATA, R, or Epi Info. Please provide specific examples. Note that this question will be used to assist the program with matching applicants to appropriate host sites.
   5. Why are you interested in this fellowship program?
   6. What makes you a good candidate for this fellowship program?
   7. Describe how this fellowship will help you achieve your goals.
   8. Why do you want to join CDC?
   9. How do you anticipate using the concepts and skills learned in this fellowship program? Be as specific as possible.
4. Identify three or more people to provide recommendations on your behalf.
5. Obtain unofficial copies of transcripts for all earned and in-progress college degrees.
   1. If any of your degrees were obtained from an institution outside the United States, you will also need a course-by-course credential evaluation.

Self-assessment of skills

Note your experience and level of expertise in the following areas:

• Computer software
• Economic and public health data sets
• Data science (wrangling, cleansing, modeling, and analytics)
• Data science methods (machine learning, NLP, and deep learning)
• Data design and development (big data, data modeling, and info retrieval)

Recommendations

• A minimum of three recommendations is required. A maximum of five is allowed.
  • At least two of the recommendations must be from people who are not CDC employees.
  • You will provide their name, organization, title, telephone, email address, and relationship to you.
• Recommenders should typically be current or former supervisors, colleagues, or professors or faculty members. Select persons familiar with your achievements, aspirations, and personal qualities that distinguish you as a good candidate for the PE Fellowship.
• Please inform all recommenders to expect a system-generated email from the PE Fellowship program (PEF@cdc.gov) with instructions for submitting the recommendations.
  • All recommendations are required to be submitted by the application deadline.

Transcripts

The application requires copies of unofficial transcripts for all earned undergraduate and graduate degrees or qualifying degrees in progress. Please provide transcripts for all degrees earned at every academic level. These credentials will be used to evaluate your eligibility and placement within the fellowship program's occupational series.

• If selected, degrees obtained at non-US institutions are required to have their academic credentials evaluated for US equivalency by a recognized credential evaluation process. Please visit the National Association of Credential Evaluation Services for more information.
• All unofficial transcripts must be received by the application deadline.
• Transcripts must state the applicant's degree of study, courses taken, earned grades, and graduation date, if the degree has been conferred.
• If selected, fellow must provide official transcripts for those degrees that will be used for job series classification. These are sent from the university registrar directly to CDC at the email address noted in the official offer letter.
• Transcripts and other proof of degree completion will not be returned.

How to apply

After you have prepared the above information, you are ready to start the online application. The link for the online application is only available and active during the open application period.

The application will prompt you for the following information.

• Citizenship status
• Self-assessment of skills
• Education and licenses
• Work and volunteer experience
• Training and skills
• Publications, presentations, grants
• Awards and honors
• Personal statement
• Selection of Traditional Track or Analytics and Modeling Track
• Three letters of recommendation
• Unofficial college or university transcript
• Applicant survey

Please complete all sections of the application. When you are finished, submit the application. You will receive an email notification stating that your application has been successfully submitted.

All supporting documents (e.g., recommendation letters, unofficial transcripts, or evaluation of transcripts) must be submitted by the application deadline.

Contact

For questions about the application process, please email PEF@cdc.gov.