Who Applied?: Class of 2021 National Fellows Program Applicants

New America’s Fellows Program invests in thinkers—journalists, scholars, filmmakers, and public policy analysts—who generate big, bold ideas that have an impact and spark new conversations about the most pressing issues of our day.

Every year, we choose our National Fellows through a rigorous, competitive selection process. We seek to support individuals who advance big ideas and do so through projects that utilize in-depth research, keen reporting, nuanced analysis, and a thoughtful storytelling approach.

Over the past 21 years, the Fellows Program has contributed to a deeper understanding of trends around pressing issues most interesting to journalists, academics, and thought leaders. Our fellows have gone on to win Pulitzers, MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowships, Emmys, Carnegie Fellowships, National Magazine Awards with reporting that have been featured on the covers of prestigious magazines. Please visit our impact page to learn more.

For our Class of 2021, we received 383 applications and awarded 10 fellowships (a 1 percent acceptance rate). Here are some observations about the Class of 2021 candidate pool.

You can learn more about the work of our 10 Class of 2021 National Fellows here.

An extensive analysis of the keywords submitted with each application yielded the following cloud of the top 41 words used this year. The size of the word represents the frequency of use, and the color-coding of the word aligns, broadly, with the issue areas they represent.

The top five keywords based on the frequency of use for the Class of 2021 are politics (24), democracy (23), history (22), race (22), and climate change (21).

Of the broader candidate pool, 282 applicants were based in the United States across 34 states and the District of Columbia, and 101 were based abroad across 46 countries.

The U.S.-based applicants concentrated in New York (83), the District of Columbia (34), California (28), Maryland (20), Virginia (14), Massachusetts (13), and Illinois (10). Internationally, applicants based in Germany, the United Kingdom, and India made up nearly 24 percent of the international candidate pool with eight applicants from each country.

Applications by state are as follows:

Every year, candidates submit applications that speak to a range of pressing global and domestic issues. Given the annual application cycle, this provides the program with a unique insight into the types of issues journalists, academics, and other thought leaders are attuned to in that given year.

Over the past four years, there has been a similar representation by the percentage of applications across the six broad categories. While there has been an 8 percent increase in “Society, Justice & Human Rights” applicants over the last four years, there has been an equal decline in “Foreign Policy” applications.

To date, the Fellows Program has supported the publication of 124 books, 10 films, and several award-winning long-form reporting projects. While the Fellows Program has an established reputation as a premier fellowship for nonfiction writers, every year we receive a range of new projects that vary in form and approach. In addition to nine books, we are supporting one film project with the acceptance of the Class of 2021.

While 64 percent of the Class of 2021 applicants submitted book projects, there was an increase in the number of non-book projects submitted this year. Eleven percent of the applicants submitted a film project, the most since the program was founded. Additionally, 3 percent proposed a podcast project, and 10 percent presented a multimedia approach to their proposed project.

While the Fellows Program attracts applicants from a range of professions, the majority of our applicants are journalists (30 percent) followed by those working in academia (16 percent). The applicants by profession are as follows.

The age and gender breakdown for the applicant pool are as follows.

New America’s Fellows Program thanks Eric & Wendy Schmidt, New America's board of directors, Emerson Collective, the Center for the Future of Arizona, the 11th Hour Project, as well as Arizona State University's Center on the Future of War for their support this year.

We would also like to thank Sophie Nunnally, Samantha Webster, Naomi Morduch Toubman, Sarah Baline, Maria Elkin, Joe Wilkes, and Joanne Zalatoris for supporting the design and preparation of this report.